


Wonderterror Weekend

by nimmieamee



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Birds, M/M, Monsters, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-12 22:18:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5682847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Parrish gets Saturday off and spends the day falling in love with Ronan Lynch. </p>
<p>He also spends it fighting monsters, visiting Europe, and traumatizing people. But falling in love with Ronan Lynch is the part he chooses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On Saturday Boyd said, "Take the day off." 

But Boyd did not give days off this freely. That was a fact of life. A good fact of life. Adam's mother had often reminded him that as long as they had work for you, they couldn't lay you off; and Boyd was the kind to always have work for him. So Adam must not have heard right. These days, he often didn't. He kept his head down, kept plugging the Hyundai's pipes to stop the fuel from running out.

"Take the rest of the day off," Boyd said again. "You're not stupid. Go on. Scat. I'll still pay you, even."

The Hyundai was a job half-done, but Boyd's wrinkled hands settled on Adam's and made him put down the plug leads he was holding.

"Adam," Boyd said. "Out. Unless you want to stay, but we're going to be drinking."

Adam didn't drink and didn't like to see it. Why went unsaid. Boyd and Adam's father were on civil terms and Adam wasn't going to insist otherwise. He stood, wiping his greasy hands on his coveralls, and let Boyd take over on the Hyundai.

But he was unsettled. His mother's words chased around inside his head. He needed this job. And Boyd was no Robert Parrish. He was a churchgoer. He rarely drank.

"Any reason, sir?" Adam asked carefully.

Boyd broke into a wide smile. 

"Zach's home," he said.

Adam recalled a stocky boy, older than him by a few years. He'd lived in the double-wide across the way and worked in his grandfather's garage for years. Adam had watched him enviously, jealous of the patient way Boyd taught him, the laughter that cut across the dusty road to tap on the windows of the Parrish trailer. The bragging way Zach always had money to spare, money from his work in Boyd's garage. 

When Zach had signed up for the army, Adam had seized the chance to take his place. He still had a scar beneath his collarbone for breaking that news to his father. Robert Parrish had preferred to see his son working for him. For Adam to cross to the church-going side of the trailer park had seemed unpardonable. 

Adam had crossed farther than that. There was a grim pleasure in knowing he'd gone farther. He held tight to it. He said, lighter than he felt, "Tell Zach I said thanks."

Boyd waved him off. Adam ducked into the office to collect his grimy things and then left Boyd humming to himself cheerily. Adam knew the track list by heart -- it started with the J. Geils Band, then it became Springsteen -- Boyd was nothing if not a creature of habit, as dully familiar to Adam as Henrietta itself was.

He climbed into the Hondayota and sat blinking at the wheel for a moment. 

A day off.

But it wasn't -- not really. He had a million things to do with this day: he should report to the Aglionby robotics lab to finish his fall project. He should get in his car and follow Cabeswater's vague, insistent, thrumming demands, find himself somewhere west of Henrietta with no gas and too many rocks to move. He should study for Latin, Econ, Trig, World History, Art History, Physics. He should review his college application essay. He should head to the library to examine the common app with no small amount of anxiety. 

_Stanford. Harvard. Yale._ he told himself. _Far away. Not here._

Cabeswater won out this time. It usually did. It was not his boss, but it did not have to be. The forest had become such a constant presence in Adam's life that he felt hollow denying it. He was growing used to the odd green tendril curling itself around his pencil as he studied. The shadows of vines on the walls. The flowers pressed between his cheek and his pillow every morning.

"Is it trying to tell me something?" he'd asked Persephone once.

"Why does it have to be _trying_ to tell you something?" Persephone had sighed. "Maybe it can't help it."

She'd told Adam that she didn't know Cabeswater like he did (as though he knew Cabeswater very well at all). She only knew the idea of it. She could make predictions about it accordingly. But most of the predictions she'd made had been like that one. It was not the boss of Adam; it was only a wellspring, a sort of blip. It was not necessarily aware; it was about as aware as most people were, which was to say not a great deal. It was not necessarily communicating; it probably couldn't help it.

She'd agreed that it was vast and ancient and greater than him, of course. But he was probably just as much a mystery to _it_ as it was to him, so it would be better if he weren't such a mystery to himself. Because between Adam and the forest one of them really ought to know what they were doing. 

It was probably accurate to say that Persephone had been his teacher. But Adam had never before had a teacher so completely, cheerfully inaccurate. In Persephone terms, Cabeswater was less a bargaining power and more an unruly charge. It was not in charge of Adam; Adam was in some ways in charge of it.

Adam didn't think that was right. He was not often in charge of anything. He had a day off and he was not in charge of it, not any more than he was in charge of his time at Boyd's. He couldn't do what he wanted to do; instead, he was taking the turnoff to Hutton, following it down to Mary's Hope Creek, trespassing on the edge of someone's property, getting out, crossing a rickety bridge, and finding --

There. An old mine entrance, caved in. He wondered if he could clear it by the afternoon. He didn't think he could. He got to work regardless, hearing the distant murmur of the forest, feeling his way around one rock at a time.

His mind wandered as he did it. Rock-moving with Persephone had been a lesson. With Noah and Blue, a relief. By himself, it was a chore, even with Cabeswater insistently thrumming around in his mind. 

If he could choose to do anything with this time, anything at all, he would go to 300 Fox Way. There was a box there with his name on it. Persephone's. careful hand. Adam had not felt ready to open it the last time he had been over, but there was something miraculous about a day off. It made him feel almost-ready. And there could be knowledge at 300 Fox Way, hidden somewhere Blue would not reveal, more to know about Gansey and the corpse road list. More to plan for, more to prevent. 

But 300 Fox Way was empty right now. It was late autumn bleeding into winter. Maura Sargent breezily called this the witchiest of seasons. According to her, every year at this time, the household emptied itself into the countryside for a series of woman-centered rituals that made little sense to Adam and that he suspected were half made-up. In part he suspected this because this year Gansey had been invited along. Persephone had left a sudden gap for which, Calla had said ominously, they needed a body. Noah had immediately volunteered and been turned-down. He did not actually always have one of those. And Ronan had risen from the kitchen table and stalked off, refusing to even acknowledge the request. 

This had left Adam and Gansey. And Adam, who'd been wondering why they couldn't ask Artemus or Gwenllian to do whatever it was they needed, had looked up and seen two pairs of canny eyes on him.

Maura and Calla had expected him to volunteer. Had wanted him to. Adam had remembered Persephone's words, how at first she'd seen him as her replacement. He wondered if she'd confided this in the other women of the house. Even Blue had to been looking at him expectantly. It would have been a lie to claim that something in him did not go bitterly bright to have Blue look at him like that.

But Gansey had been looking at him too. And one of the outer Matryoshka parts of Gansey had come off, revealing something wistful and resigned. 

Sometimes, during the day, Adam would catch Gansey staring at Blue in the rearview of the Camaro. Adam would feel blankly furious. But the fury was nothing to what came at night, when thoughts of the corpse road and the Dreaming Tree would play in his head. _We need the favor_ , he would remind himself, instead of saying anything. _We'll get the favor. Don't fight. Don't fight. None of it even matters if we don't get the favor._

If they did get it -- what then? There was a certainty in the way Gansey looked at Blue, in the way Blue looked at him. Adam was so tired of pretending that they would not be saving Gansey for that. For Blue. She loved Gansey. She did not love Adam. 

It was as deeply unsurprising as it was painful.

So he'd said, "I have to work. You should take Gansey."

Ronan had given a savage, mocking whoop from somewhere near the stairwell. That had almost made it worth it.

Now, he was not so sure. If he had gone off with the Fox Way women, if he had asked for a day off and miraculously received it and decamped to do sacred psychic moon rituals, then he would not be here right now, covered in sweat and grease, moving rocks.

Cabeswater did not seem to want the mine fully exposed. But it did not want it fully covered, either. It wanted something halfway there, that would trigger a fall of rocks down the gloomy shaft, that would then--

This part was not entirely clear. Adam had to stop, retreat to a worn stump and sit for a minute. He could feel a thin, weak channel of the ley line beneath and he took a moment to align himself on it the way Persephone had taught him. Then he saw it better, the way that the rocks were lodged incorrectly down below. He would have to be careful about how to rearrange the ones near the mine entrance. If too few fell, the blockage would remain. Too many, or any of the wrong size and shape, and it would never clear properly.

It was detail-driven, careful work. Logistics. Adam exhaled and stood again and went to do it properly. He was good at work like this. That was some small comfort. Sometimes he aligned himself on the line and came up with what seemed like unsolvable problems -- boulders too great to move, streams too fast and wide to clear. Persephone had always maintained that the Magician's role was to find a way around the problem regardless. But Adam thought that in instances like that, the least Cabeswater could do was help somehow.

It was large and powerful, and he was only himself. 

"It can't all be--be me aligning myself, or else me scrying," he'd told Persephone. "That won't get it _done_."

Especially the scrying. Then, he hadn't even realized that you could lose yourself scrying. But Persephone had never seemed to have any real fear of it, even though now Adam thought grimly that she must have known what would happen.

She must have known, and yet she had said, "You have to scry before you can really know the scrying won't help."

Which was circular, but true enough. And she was right that it had always shown him where to dig so that the boulder fell the way it needed to, or where to find the place to cross the stream. 

It still felt like a meagre tool. When he aligned himself, and when he scryed, he was nothing more than one of many shadows on the ley line, endless beings spread along it. Endless and yet not terribly magic for all that he was the Magician, because he'd begun to really feel the magic things, and they were far, far more noticeable than the other kind. The rocks that were most charged with ley-energy. The dream things Ronan left scattered around. Matthew and Aurora Lynch.

Aurora was another concern he'd brought to Persephone. Ronan's mother, trapped in Cabeswater. Ronan's plan to loose the ley line from its confines and free her.

Persephone's brows were so fair as to be invisible, and yet she'd still managed to make it clear that they were spiking up to her hairline. Her feet in their laced-up, knee-high, unmistakable boots had tap-tapped once. Twice. Not nice taps, but sort of urgent morse-code ones.

" _That_ ," she had said, "would be very entitled."

Adam hadn't known what she'd meant. Did that mean it couldn't be done? 

"I didn't say you couldn't. I said you shouldn't," she'd said. "If you were meant to do that it would be necessary, and it's not."

Circular again. Was it beyond the magician's power? Beyond the Greywaren's?

"If the Greywaren is asking you to do that, then he's a very entitled Greywaren. And one should never be entitled."

Then, sadly:

"I didn't think you would be, Adam. You're usually not. You don't believe in it enough."

Believed in magic, she meant. Believed in Cabeswater, and in the ley line, and in all the hidden magic it held. And she had been right; Adam, for all that he'd bargained with the forest, was a true skeptic. But now he believed. Finding Gwenllian, finding the animals in the cave -- these things had ripped away any remaining shreds of doubt. The ley line was not something one simply felt or saw; it had to be something one could use. Work with. Free.

And she hadn't said he couldn't do it. She hadn't said it would be impossible. She'd only said that he shouldn't. 

But then she had also believed in scrying.

By now, Adam had finished moving and steadying rocks, loosing the ones he needed to, pulling out and carefully storing the rest to the side. He felt the line shift itself, move itself into place. The way it was supposed to be. 

If it could move itself like this, then what was to stop _him_ from moving it? If rocks could stop it up, then why couldn't he wrench it free? 

It was not his idea. It was Ronan's idea, and therefore faintly ludicrous. But the more he thought about it the more right it seemed. Or no, he told himself, as he climbed back into his car and started the drive to St. Agnes. Not quite right; not quite real.

But _promising_.

Promising. That was a word people like Gansey's parents used, for people like Adam. A promising young man. No one now. No one we know. But -- but promising. Adam had grown so used to this empty term that he hadn't realized what it meant for something to be promising, how promising could feel true.

It felt true when Ronan seemed to say it. Ronan didn't say it outright. Ronan, who was in no way a promising young man, who was impossible, who lived to scoff at the concept of promising, said instead:

_Magician_. 

Ronan had a way of making filthy words wonderful, and normal ones terrible. Adam didn't know how; it was simply a talent, and one he didn't necessarily want to call to Ronan's attention. Ronan hardly needed to be told that he was full of this particular perverse magic. He was full of other kinds, too, and his ability to twist a word did not rank high in the gallery of his remarkable abilities. And this word he didn't twist. This word he said like he knew perfectly well the way it should be said, like he alone understood what it embodied. Saying it even made him look different, softer and yet sharper, cutting and understanding all at once.

Ronan believed that Adam could do this. He believed in the Magician in even a way Persephone had not. He believed in a way that almost -- nearly -- made Adam believe.

But Ronan was also unreachable this afternoon. 

He was at Saturday detention at Aglionby. If Ronan missed any more detentions, he would be on academic probation for the third year in a row. Gansey had recited this crisply as he'd packed, midway between reminding Ronan not to fill the house with animals and reminding Ronan not to do anything that would impact any load-bearing walls. And, finally, because it bore repeating: 

Ronan was to report for detention. On pain of disappointing Gansey _extremely_.

This was not why Ronan had reported for detention. Ronan disappointed Gansey routinely. Ronan avoided academic probation for his own reasons.

It would be best to leave him to it. Detention couldn't be that bad, though Adam had never served one. So he went to St. Agnes and showered off the grease from work. When he was finished showering, his textbooks stared dully at him. Latin, Econ, Trig, World History, Art History, Physics. He leafed through his notes for each. There was little to add. He rewrote the first sentence of his extra credit Art History essay, due Monday. Ronan had sworn he wouldn't be doing it, but Adam had no choice in the matter. He dutifully read it back to himself to ensure that it was perfect. He then became annoyed with the messiness of some of his Latin flashcards, carefully erased them, copied them out again. He went over his answers to various college essays. 

_Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition to adulthood within your culture, community, or family._

or

_Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, please share your story._

or

_Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?_

He had careful answers for every single one, and he would be discussing each with his college counselor on Monday. He'd thought this would feel agonizing, but once he'd begun to do the work it hadn't. He was good at working, and this was work worth being good at. College. College. Anywhere. His counselor had already explained financial aid, given him applications for various scholarships. Adam had taken it all with shaking hands and only nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Work study? Yes. Yes, he could do that. Applying for grants? He could do that, too.

Anything to go anywhere but where he was, where he'd begun. Adam would not kid himself. Magician or no magician, he would be lucky to make it beyond Henrietta.

But he would make it. He told himself this as he crossed out lines, rewrote paragraphs. Examined the packets the counselor had given him, double-checking his answers to all the questions. It all seemed final. It all seemed complete.

When he looked at the clock, hardly an hour had passed. He was not sure what else he could write. This was so important and yet he had nothing more to say.

Vines played on the wall. He stared at them. Then back to his essays. Then a green shoot appeared near his ankle. Then back to his essays.

Twenty more minutes passed, and he was done with the important things, and he was bored. He was usually too tired to be bored. Ronan was the opposite, often energized and bored with his own energy, and for a long time Adam had been unable to understand this or sympathize. He still couldn't. But feeling this improbably free must come close. Free for once. There was no car to attend to, no studying to do, Cabeswater was appeased, and he found -- after unwisely downing half a box of cheap cereal that he would miss for breakfast tomorrow -- that he was not even hungry. 

He still wanted to try Ronan's idea. Loosing the line. He turned the thought of it over in his head carefully. He knew he should be careful. He would have to scry at first; scrying and aligning himself was all he knew how to do. But when he thought of scrying he recalled sitting in caves and losing himself. Sitting at the table in Fox Way, with only Blue and Calla to bring him back.

No. He would not be uneasy about this. This was not the same thing. That had been losing himself on the line; his would be bringing the line to him. And to Ronan. The thought of bringing it to Ronan had some lure in it. He wondered if he would see Ronan's face change, if Ronan would say it again the way he had before.

_Magician_.

Adam headed to Aglionby.


	2. Chapter 2

Adam assumed they would be leaving in the BMW if this was successful, so he biked to Aglionby instead of taking the Hondayota. Since it was Saturday, Aglionby's stately, tree-lined school driveway was empty enough to seem unfamiliar, but the main campus was active as it ever was. Janitorial staff, local workers from the dry cleaners, deliverymen with exorbitant amounts of food. Students stayed in bed late, or else lazed about the quad, or threw expensive suitcases in expensive cars and took off. To D.C.. To Charlotte. To Boulder, Colorado. Ski trips were planned, and Christmas trips to Turks and Caicos. Boys in loose-fitting pajama pants clustered near the school post office, complaining into their cell phones. They still needed that new set of speakers, that new tablet, that new computer, that new girlfriend, that new car. That new phone -- this one sucked. 

Aglionby during the week was bad enough, but on Saturdays the school made Adam feel even more acutely aware of his origins. He tied his bike next to Burwell Hall, the campus' main building, and did his best to ignore a cluster of classmates playing lacrosse near the front steps. Inside, the hall was perpetually lit for evening, the casement windows so old and their sills so deep that they hardly let in any light. Both detentions and standardized tests were held in the Cary Room on the top floor, and if Adam had never been there for the former, at least he'd sat through the latter enough times to be able to find his way there without thinking about it. He headed for the back entrance of the hall. This led directly to a closed-off space. the domain of off-duty test proctors and the occasional college interviewer. Adam generally felt his stomach drop to his knees whenever he approached this space, crammed with its folding table and plastic chairs and Aglionby-blue partitions. He shoved the feeling away now and peered out between the partitions at the rest of the hall. 

Ronan had been assigned a seat in the first row. He was writing his work out by hand and being loud, swearing every few minutes. Now and then he swore, the words so natural coming from him that no one else in the hall seemed to notice. Periodically he stopped writing to glare over his shoulder at the rows of boys behind him. He did not look like he was doing schoolwork. He looked like he was planning a heist. 

But compared to Henry Cheng, the only other student forced into the front, Ronan was behaving himself. Cheng was fiddling loudly with his watch. The watch chirpily informed him that an email had been sent. Cheng lazily played with it until it informed the room, more quietly, that he had successfully lowered its volume.

"Henry, I swear to God," said Professor Mansfield, the proctor. He was tweedy and coffee-smelling, with an accent that was either vaguely British or else entirely manufactured. The last time Adam had spoken to him had been when Mansfield had interviewed him for a prospective place at Aglionby and had told Adam -- clearly not knowing what a frenzy of wild hope he could cause -- that he thought Adam might thrive here. He still inspired in Adam a mingled sense of nausea and gratitude.

Cheng said something to the glittering, technological marvel on his wrist. It told him something in response.

"You know, some of us are trying to work here," Ronan said. 

Mansfield massaged his temples. "Henry," he repeated. 

His attention was entirely focused on Cheng. Everyone was focused on Cheng because Cheng was that kind of person. So Adam took the opportunity to slowly widen the gap between the partitions, so that he had more space to work. He snuck a hand down and gingerly touched the carpet. He visualized the space. Beyond this carpet, two floors of classrooms. Beyond that, a basement and cement foundations and dirt, endless dirt. This was not a spot on the ley line, but he could feel the ley line, faint, some fifty yards to the left of him.

"I'm doing my assignment," Cheng was saying now. "Your assignment. I'm emailing your assignment to myself line by line because you won't let me use my laptop."

"As we have discussed, many, many times, Henry, laptops, phones, and ipads are not permitted during detention. My assignment can be done with paper and pen," Mansfield said. 

"Then you complain about my spelling," Cheng complained now. 

"I doubt your spelling will improve just because you're using your watch," said Mansfield. 

"Uh, yes it will," said Cheng, speaking very slowly. "My watch takes care of that."

Mansfield sighed and went over to Cheng, presumably to try and confiscate the watch. Adam kneeled down between the partitions. Again he let himself feel the space, the walls and the ceilings and the human things and the dirt. The line danced just over there, magical, promising. But any overflow would come up against the very solid walls of the building. Adam had the vaguely panicked sense that maybe he didn't know what he was doing. What if he collapsed Burwell Hall? 

He brushed this thought away. He was here now. He could see Ronan in the front row and he allowed himself a moment to really look at him. Ronan was spread out carelessly, handsomely, one leg propped up on the seat next to him. He was still writing with that sense of mysterious purpose. Mysterious because any purpose looked out of place on Ronan; he was not, by nature, purposeful. He didn't have to be.

But somehow purpose suited him. Adam would not have expected it to. But it did.

Adam would loose the line for this boy. He could. He could try. He swallowed hard, and bent to it. He had a single relic of Persephone's, a short-handled knife that Blue had given him, forced on him in that stubborn and caring way Blue had. If you won't come get what she left you, then take this. It's what she left me. No, don't give it back. I'm not taking it back until you take what's yours.

Now he took the knife from his pocket and set it on the carpet in front of him. Persephone's teachings on scrying had been matter of fact and double-edged. Water was good, candles were better; anything could be water, anything could be candles. Getting lost was very easy. 

He set both hands on either side of the knife and looked at its glinting, reflective surface. He tried to concentrate. He could feel the line all the time now if he tried, but feeling it was not enough. He needed to see it. He needed to see it and he needed to tell himself that he believed he wouldn't destroy Burwell Hall, because certainty, Persephone had said, was important, and also probably one of his better qualities. Adam hadn't asked her what she meant by that. She hadn't said it like a compliment.

"Try to be as certain as you are reckless," Persephone had said. "And you'll probably be alright. I think."

He was certainly reckless. Scrying -- he knew now -- came with its dangers. And one of these dangers came in spreading himself out like this, going beyond his fragile, kneeling form. Until he was so calmly outside himself that he could see the distant line and everything on the line, the whole network of living and dead, magic and unmagic things passing over and along it. 

He _tugged_.

It brought the illumination of the line over by just a few degrees. Again. Over the dead stone casing of the building and inside it. Again. Over Mansfield; over Cheng; over the irritable, bored shapes of the other students. Again. Over Ronan, somehow larger and brighter than all the rest. 

He tugged until he felt the line overflow, the connectivity and power lash out behind its confines, toward him. It was such a large transgression, and so heady, that he had to wonder if this was what Ronan felt like. What dream thieves and Greywarens felt like, when they drained a line to make what they pleased. But Adam wasn't draining; he was channeling, coaxing it out of its proper place and along a new path, up three stories, avoiding load-bearing walls. 

He only needed just enough power, right here, in this room.

There. _There_. There it was.

The lights went out. Because it was always evening inside Burwell Hall, the room was plunged into near-total darkness. No one spoke for a moment. Relieved, Adam let the line go slack momentarily, struggled to come back closer to himself. He had not gone so far and yet this was always the hardest part: the coming back. He could not tell if he managed it fully. There was enough of him back inside his body that he could see Ronan, now.

In the gloom, the harsh lines of Ronan's face looked soft. 

His voice was as sharp as ever when he said, "Now I can't do my fucking essay." 

Mansfield said, "Ronan, why must it be a _fucking_ \--"

"The essay could be totally fucking him," Cheng offered noncommittally. 

For a single moment, in what little light there was, Ronan looked supremely jealous than Cheng had jumped on this rebuttal before he could think it up for himself. Then he looked enraged. Then, after making a superior sweep of the room beneath his long lashes, he caught sight of Adam and looked perplexed.

It was an entirely new look on Ronan. It did not belong. It made Adam feel perverse and satisfied. He still worried that he had gone too far, might go too far again. But to see that look -- it was worth it.

_Keep talking_ , he mouthed. But then Cheng was talking instead.

"You know, we'd still have some light in here if we were allowed tablets and phones and laptops," he told Mansfield.

"Henry, after today you won't be allowed watches," Mansfield said.

"Alright," Cheng said. "I'm still right and you know it, but civil disobedience requires some sacrifices."

Sacrifice. Adam held tight to that thought and let it focus him again, staring back at the glint of the knife. Again. Again he spread out beyond himself. Now he could see not just the line, but Cabeswater in particular, a force so large and alive that it seemed a shame it was so alien. Adam had assumed it might be confused about what he was doing, or angry with him. But instead it was louder and more potent than it had been all day, thoroughly excited by his actions. 

Cabeswater wanted him to do this again.

This time, he did it more confidently and with greater force. Instead of a small channel, a stream, he let the line overflow into a clear river. He invited Cabeswater to pour in some of its own power. He wanted it to. He knew the result he wanted.

The casement windows burst open. Light streamed into the room from several points, catching Mansfield, Cheng, and Ronan in its path. Only Ronan seemed unperturbed by this. In fact, when the sound of flapping wings drowned out the chirp of Cheng's watch, he looked unmistakably delighted. 

Then the ravens poured in. 

So many, at first, that they blocked out the light. They threw Adam off momentarily. They did not feel like Cabeswater at all. Cabeswater was here, pouring in its energy, but these birds were something else entirely, something with its own purpose. As Adam shakily tried to disentangle himself from it, to come away from it and back to himself, the boys in the back began to shout. They kept shouting as he struggled to return. For a moment he couldn't believe that someone like him was doing this at all, that someone like his could make people like these boys scream this way, but he had to let go of the thought very quickly. He had to focus instead on himself.

This was what had ruined Persephone. It was hard to understand your edges on the ley line.

He did not know how long it took for him to come back, only how difficult it was. But this passed. Slowly, slowly, Adam became himself again. 

And then Ronan looked soft, the most delighted Ronan yet. And for a moment, something inside Adam _thrilled_.

But the boys in the back of the room were screaming and and jumping on their seats, or diving beneath the tables. The birds were still streaming in. Adam blinked at this, because it did not make sense. 

He was not doing it now. He had let go of the line and come back to himself. He had stopped. Why was this not stopping? Was something else doing it?

Something else was doing it. Vines wound their way along Adam's ankles and wrists, pinning him to the floor. 

It was solidly terrifying in a way that not even lthe thought of osing himself on the line was. Adam struggled against the vines. It didn't help. They were tough, fat and green and unbreakable, and in his ears he could hear the ravens whispering. 

_Magician. Magician. Mine_.

_No_ , Adam thought wildly. _No. My own. Mine._ His breath hitched in his throat. He could not make himself calm.

"Calm down!" Mansfield was shouting now. "Calm down! Carruthers -- you go get Dean Carlisle!" 

Tad Carruthers made a beeline for the door, failing to confirm whether he would return with the dean. Whitman Yates followed, and so did Nate Prouse. Sheridan Fuller had let himself be backed into a corner and was now crouching low, his hands over his head. Branson Orson II was saying, " _Fuck_ birds, I fucking hate birds!" and trying and failing to hit the ravens with his lacrosse stick; and Easton Sloane was attempting to bat them away with a tennis racket.

"Calm down!" Mansfield said again. He seemed to take strength from the sight of Orson and Sloane. He began attempting to shoo the ravens out himself. They resisted shooing.

_Mine_ they sang again. Adam was not sure if it was them or Cabeswater. He was not sure they weren't Cabeswater itself, and he was not sure anyone else could hear them. His terror crested. The more he tried to pull himself free of the vines, the tighter they became.

Now Mansfield said, "Everyone -- try and force them towards the windows!"

No one did this. Wyndham Quimby screamed and dove under a desk. Orson was still trying and failing to hit any birds. Ronan lifted one hand lazily over his head and waved it around, accomplishing nothing, and then shrugged.

"Sorry," he told Mansfield, sounding bored. "They're not listening to me."

"This is disgusting," Cheng said, from somewhere beneath his chair. "This is going to cost the school so many donations when I tell my parents, man." 

"I wasn't going to donate anyway," Ronan said. Now he was deliberately avoiding looking in Adam's direction. Adam hardly thought this was necessary. He did not feel like something that could be looked at. He felt small and trapped, nothing more than a conduit for the line and for Cabeswater. He could not move. He could not move. Cabeswater was holding him in place.

_Not yours_ , he thought. _Not yours!_

It did no good.

Now Mansfield picked up a cowering Skip Whittaker by the back of his polo shirt and shoved him towards the main doors. 

"Everyone out!" he said. "Out! Detention is canceled today!" 

Cheng made a break for the door. The others followed, then Mansfield himself. He shouted, "Ronan, hurry up!" and was soon gone.

Ronan stayed. He folded his paper neatly and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then capped his pen and put that away, too. The ravens flew circles around him, never colliding or attacking him as they had the others. They cast magnificent shadows against his cheeks as he stood, lit by the open windows. Cabeswater surged joyously. 

_Raven King_ , Adam thought. But when he tried to call out to Ronan he found that he couldn't. 

Ronan crossed to Adam's side of the hall. He tried to nudge away one of the vines on Adam's wrists with the toe of his boot.

"This is a horror show," he said. His tone was satisfied, his face savage bliss. His boot tapped lightly up Adam's arm, until he found a space in the crook of Adam's elbow where Adam -- in his rush to come to Aglionby -- had failed to rub away the grease from the morning spent at Boyd's.

"It's a fucking vision, Parrish," he said now. The birds or the grease stain. Adam didn't know which. Adam still wanted to respond. Still couldn't. He managed to jerk down at the vines with his chin, as though by this he could convey the problem.

_Entitled_ , Persephone had said. Entitled to what? Cabeswater, Adam had assumed. But nothing about the forest felt like it disapproved of what Adam had done. He'd loosed the line from its confines, cut away a new path for Cabeswater's energy, and now the forest, pleased, would not let him go, would not let it _stop_.

"Adam," Ronan said now, some of the pleasure chased out of his voice. He was beginning to see the problem.

Adam wanted to say: _I did it. I opened up the line. Like you wanted, for your mother and Matthew. I just wanted to show you._

But whatever he'd done seemed to have bound him so tightly to Cabeswater that he could not even speak. 

"Adam!" Ronan said again. Now he seemed to grasp the problem. He knelt down, took the knife, and hacked the vines around Adam's wrists. The birds continued to circle overhead. 

"Fuck off!" Ronan said, and batted at them ferociously.

They cleared out of the room in moments. Adam felt Cabeswater falter, felt it go hesitant. Felt its presence leave; felt the line return to its place. Ronan finished freeing his wrists and then pulled Adam's shoulders close so that he could free his trapped ankles. Adam wanted to help, but couldn't make his hands work well enough. It made no difference. Ronan made short work of the remaining vines before forcing Adam up.

_Cabeswater is not the boss of me_ , Adam reminded himself shakily, though he still couldn't talk. He was choking, something was crawling up his throat. Something was growing. After a few panicked moments he spat it out at Ronan's feet. It was a flower, purple-blue, in the shape of a mangled star. Like a lily or a hyacinth, but not quite either. Adam stared at it, blank and terrified.

"Adam," Ronan said again.

Adam found his voice.

"Let's go," he said. "Let's--let's go."


	3. Chapter 3

He couldn't bring himself talk about the vines. He didn't want to talk about them. He hoped Ronan wouldn't.

Instead Ronan said, "You messed with the varsity crew team. So that was something."

"Was that the crew team?" Adam said. "They all got detention at the same time?"

"Some kind of party; nothing major. I don't think they were even drinking that much. It's the _crew_ team." 

Ronan did not say what they both had to be thinking, which was how lucky Adam was that Gansey hadn't been around to see it. Gansey would hear about it. But Adam felt very sure that Ronan wouldn't bother to explain it if Gansey asked, which was a relief. Adam wanted Gansey out of this. This was not what Adam had expected it to be.

Ronan had given back the knife, but Adam couldn't seem to hold it right. His hands felt wrong. Locked into place. Forced. He tried to press them against his legs to make them feel like they were his again, to remind himself that he could move them as he wished. He could still feel the vines in his mind. 

Cabeswater could tie him down. Literally. There was something vast and terrible to it. Adam did not want to follow it to its logical conclusion.

"If they even knew it was you, what could they do?" Ronan said now, as though CEOs and federal judges and state governors did not have children on the Aglionby varsity crew team. 

Adam brought his hand to the window, splayed his fingertips. No change. These were his hands, and yet they did not feel like it.

_I will be your hands_. 

Had he given away more than he'd meant to? 

"Mansfield would make you write them a letter, probably," Ronan said. "'Dear Assholes, sorry I made you shit your pants when you were in detention. Why were you having a team party when your sport doesn't even start until the spring? Love, Parrish.'"

"The tennis team used to have parties all the time," Adam said, only halfway listening.

"Those weren't real parties," Ronan said. "Those were recruitment events."

"Who were you recruiting last winter, when it wasn't even tennis season?" . 

_I will be your hands. I will be your hands._

"People for the squash team," Ronan 's voice took on a note of casual superiority. "It has a very good chance of being added to 2016 Olympics. Olympic squash 2016. Speaking of." He reached for the dial on the car stereo. The murder squash song came on. Adam groaned, but his heart wasn't in it. He felt better if he focused on it. Squash One. Squash Two. 

"Are you sorry you quit team sports before you could make this the Aglionby squash team song?" Adam asked. Squash One. Squash Two. 

" _Yes_ ," Ronan said. 

The murder squash song crescendo-ed horribly. The car made a turn off the main road, towards Monmouth. Adam could feel the ley line falling away behind them. He didn't want it to. He needed to be on the line. He didn't know why, but it felt like the one sure thing Persephone had left him. Alignment. Whatever he'd done, and whatever Cabeswater had done to pin him down -- it had left him unaligned. Scared, and afraid to even acknowledge why. He told Ronan to turn back.

"Why?" Ronan said. But Adam felt the car make a U-turn and within a few moments he felt more right inside, closer to where he needed to be. 

"We need to get on the ley line," he instructed Ronan. "Left up ahead, then another left when you can." 

Ronan complied. Adam curled into himself in the passenger seat and offered directions as best he could, trying to find the closest spot to the line that man-made roads could afford them. The murder squash song blared on repeat, foul and somehow deeply comforting.

They hit the line somewhere on a back street lined with sagging clapboard houses. He instructed Ronan to pull over near one of the driveways, so that the car could sit parallel to the line. He felt something in his body right itself. When he splayed out his fingers now, they felt like they belonged to him. He breathed out hard and gave into the enormity of the hidden road underneath him, the way it stretched, stretched, stretched. It went to D.C. It went to New York. It linked the world.

A world he wanted to see someday. As himself, not spread so thin that he couldn't feel his edges. As himself, free, not locked in place. Not bound. If Cabeswater could bind him -- what did that mean? Did it mean that it could keep him here? Did this mean that if he tried to _leave_ \--

He could feel Cabeswater reaching for him. He recoiled from it. His head felt too light and his throat still hurt from coughing up the flower. He passed his fingers over his forearms and told himself what a relief it was, the strange aches of this body, this reality. He had this. This was his. Cabeswater was not the boss of him.

Except when it was.

Ronan turned off the ignition and the murder squash song died away. 

"Come on," he told Adam.

"What?" Adam said.

"I'm not taking you away from your ley line, Parrish," Ronan said, rolling his eyes and opening the driver-side door. "I don't want you vomiting in my car." 

Adam didn't think he was going to vomit, but he got out of the car anyway. He probably looked like he was going to. He couldn't fault Ronan for wanting him out of the BMW in that case.

"Come on," Ronan said. He pulled Adam's bike from the trunk and set it near the curb. Then he perched on the seat, very large and intimidating for such a sorry vehicle, like a beautiful and deadly animal sunning itself on the hood of a Yugo 45. 

"Get on," he told Adam. "On the handlebars."

"That would only make me vomit worse," Adam pointed out. "Was it with you and getting me to ride things?"

Suddenly Ronan was looking very deliberately at his hands. Even through his terror, Adam felt a strange sense of murky victory. He got on the handlebars. He felt too long and awkward to fit properly, but he somehow managed it.

"We look ridiculous," he told Ronan.

"I need less comments from you, you twilight zone fucker," Ronan told him. "If I follow the curb, will I stay on the ley line?"

"If I'm a twilight zone fucker, what does that make you?" 

"Will. I. Stay. On. The. Line?" Ronan said.

He would for a little bit, so Adam nodded. Ronan then took the curb more slowly and carefully than Adam was expecting, which was good, because the pavement was cracked and ruined in places. This part of Henrietta was nicer than the trailer park, but not by much. Many of the houses were abandoned, and those that were occupied had piles of junk in the yards. Old televisions, old mattresses. Broken trampolines and headless dolls. Half-starved dogs and cats picking their way along the porches.

Adam desperately wanted to leave. He wanted to _leave_. Surely, if he kept himself on the ley line, settled somewhere else along the ley line, that would be alright? Cabeswater would find that alright?

_Cabeswater is not the boss of me_ , he thought again. He held so tightly to the handlebars that he knew his knuckles were white. 

Ronan reached a section of the curb that diverged from the ley line. Adam jumped down from the handlebars and let his feet follow the line over a weedy lawn, to the door of an abandoned house. Inside, the house was eerie and still, furniture covered in dirty plastic, dusty porcelain figures on the shelves.

"Gross," Ronan said, following him and dropping the bike unceremoniously by the door. "An old person lived here."

Adam stepped past the living area and through a small kitchenette, to a tiny dining space beyond. There were piles of abandoned papers on the table: old gas bills, letters from collection companies; nothing more than what you'd find in any Henrietta kitchen. Adam couldn't bear to look at it. He swept it all from the table. The action was sudden and violent and he was sorry for it almost immediately -- how often had he seen his father smack the electric bill against the table like this? How often had he _winced_? -- but nothing happened. The papers only floated down in a cloud of choking dust.

Ronan said, "Jesus, Parrish. It's bad enough in here without you dropping all this old lady's shit."

Adam turned around. Ronan was examining the contents of an elderly refrigerator, pulling out jars and foul-smelling cartons and peering inside them with interest. 

"How do you know it was a lady?" Adam asked.

"Yogurt," Ronan said derisively. 

"Men eat yogurt. I ate yogurt last week," Adam said.

"Men who don't know the maggot," Ronan said, "do not eat yogurt."

He did not sound like anything would sway him, much less common sense, so Adam sat at the table. He watched Ronan rifle through the fridge and cabinets, pointing out what he found and what it must mean. It was stupid and young. It calmed Adam in a way little else could right then. 

Ancient jar of maraschino cherries.

"Woman." 

Bowl of rotting potpourri. 

"Woman." 

Mysterious length of rubber tubing. 

"Sociopath."

"That one's not 'woman' too?" Adam asked faintly.

"Don't be sexist," Ronan said. "Sociopathy has no gender."

He seemed jittery and extremely alive. Adam suspected that he didn't want to be here. This was Ronan, and it was a Saturday. He would want to be moving and moving fast. Taking the road to the Barns at a breakneck speed, doing donuts in Monmouth's parking lot, or destroying the mobility scooters in the aisle of the local Walmart.

"You don't have to hang around," Adam told him, closing his eyes. He added, "I've got my bike. I can get home on my own."

In response, Ronan wandered back into the living room and picked up some china figurines. He dropped one in the drain, capped it with something he found nearby, and flicked the switch for the garbage disposal. For a moment, Adam thought it would not come to life. Then it did with the shriek of shattering porcelain, a hideous wailing that left Ronan looking utterly content.

"You can go if you want," Adam tried again.

No response. When the wailing died down, Ronan added another figurine to start it up again. Adam decided to drop it.

"How is the electricity even on?" he asked instead, over the noise.

Ronan shrugged. "The house is on the ley line," he pointed out.

But Adam couldn't feel any surge in the walls. Maybe if he tried to scry, tried to reach out for Cabeswater again, he would feel it. He didn't want to do that. He shouldn't have done it to begin with. Or, no. Maybe he should have. Now he could be sure of the kind of power Cabeswater still had over him. He should have known it all along. He should have known it after D.C., after he'd been forced to walk sightlessly along the highway for hours. Not in control of himself. 

Knowing Persephone had left him thinking he could use the bargain. But the bargain used him. The forest could take hold of him, very literally pin him into place. Better to have this truth out in the open. 

He buried his head in his hands again. Something touched the back of his neck, briefly, and he nearly jumped.

Ronan stared down at him, looking irritated.

"Let's go somewhere on the line that isn't so fucking dull," he said. "This lady didn't even have a T.V. No wonder she died."

"You don't have a T.V.," Adam said.

"I have seven," said Ronan. 

"Dreamed or real?" 

"What do you think?" said Ronan, which was not an answer. 

Adam followed him to the door. Ronan was born to magic, wild and fiercely in control of it. Never beholden to it. How laughable this was. Ronan -- who would never leave this place, and never choose to -- could probably go wherever he wanted. It was a waste. It made Adam furious. He felt like he would choke again, and this time only trailer park dust would come out. His past, present, and future.

_I want to leave_ , he thought again, barely processing anything else as they walked back along the curb. _I want to leave, I want to leave, I want to_ leave.

In response, Ronan said, "What the fuck?"

A tall, snub-nosed person was sitting on the hood of Ronan's BMW. He was young, only a few years older than they were, but he gave Adam the impression of being worn somehow. It took Adam a moment to realize why. He lived three trailers down from the Parrishes. Tyler Sayre. A true Henriettan; Adam had lived a lifetime of un-knowing this boy. Tyler's father ran the little league. Adam's father had pulled Adam out of the little league, for wayward behavior and a tendency to be insufficiently respectful. Tyler's father had said, "Well, Robert, that's your choice," and that had been that.

For a few seconds, Adam could not understand what Tyler was doing on the hood of the Ronan's BMW. Tyler should know that he belonged elsewhere. Then a figure darted out from behind the BMW to come to Tyler's aid -- Brandon Cobb. From two streets away, the blue double-wide. 

Ronan swore, and stepped forward. 

Somehow the world of Ronan and the world of the trailer park collided, which should not have happened. But it did. The collision was profane, vicious, jabs and curses and someone in the dirt. Outnumbered as he was, Ronan came alive with this, came alive with the shouts and the fighting.

Adam did not. He stepped back. Everything narrowed to a single thought: he wanted to _leave_.

"Easy, raven boy," said someone behind him. Zach Boyd, of all people, was trying to separate them. "Raven boy!" 

It was a term Adam hadn't heard properly, hadn't used properly, in ages. It felt somehow forbidden, to know what that meant in Henrietta terms, to know it was not a compliment. The knowing made Adam ashamed, a great interloper. He couldn't be a real raven boy if hr knew what it meant. 

He couldn't be a real raven boy and it didn't matter, because he would never leave.

"Easy, now," Zach said. Something about him was innately calm as he shoved his friends aside to offer a hand to Ronan. 

"Stay off my car, fuckbag," Ronan said. He brushed past Zach's hand to try and tackle Tyler again. Zach swore. He caught Ronan and held him off.

"Adam," he said now. Adam was surprised to hear Zach say his name, surprised and somehow full of dread to know that Zach could even recognize him. Of course he could. Adam had been born in a trailer. They both had been.

Zach said, "Adam, control your fucking friend, man, come on." 

"You were fucking around with his _car_ ," was what Adam said in response.

He didn't know why he said it. As soon as he said it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say. One couldn't reason one's way out of the trailer park, not really. You couldn't reason and you couldn't argue and you couldn't--

_I want to leave_. He didn't want this, all Henrietta drawl, dust and dirt, sweat and violence.

"Right," Zach said now. "And we're sorry." He leveled a significant look at all his friends. 

But Tyler said, "Come on, Adam. You know how it is when raven boys leave their stuff lying around."

Adam remembered coming to little league practices bruised, coming to school with new scars. _You know how it is_.

"How is it?" Ronan asked, succeeding now in shoving Zach off and leaving him sprawling. "Three counts of vandalism and you not being able to meet your fucking bail?"

This was probably the most raven boy thing he could have said. It made Adam embarrassed for him and it did not improve things. Tyler swore and hung back, afraid; and Brandon swore and went in swinging; and Zach barely managed to hold him and Ronan apart again.

Zach said, "Come on, Adam. You left your momma to hang out with this?" 

Adam flinched. 

Despite his words, Zach sounded thoroughly unsurprised that Adam would not get involved. Adam had always had this running in his veins, a cocktail of cowardice and trailer-made muddiness. Adam wanted to _leave_.

Surprisingly, it was Ronan who made it happen. He shoved off of Zach and viciously jabbed Tyler, and then he had Adam's hand again and was pulling him towards the car and shoving him in. Adam could barely comprehend this, a Ronan who would walk away from a fight. Ronan made up for it with a string of the filthiest and most creative obscenities Adam had heard yet, mixed in with genuine raven boy legal threats. He slammed his way into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut and nearly ran Zach over.

"Do you still need to stay on your fucking ley line?" he demanded, already pulling the car away from it.

Did it matter? Adam felt useless and sorry. He could see himself standing there on the curb, offering nothing, doing nothing. He thought maybe it hadn't been his fault, that they'd pressed all around the BMW, taken liberties with something that was so intimately Ronan's. But he could also see how it was his fault. He'd been the one to pull Ronan out of detention and make him waste his time here, in this neighborhood, in this town. Adam stared sightlessly at it all as Ronan flew past, ignoring the speed limit. The shabby school, the hideous bank. The library Adam's father had dragged him out of so many times that the librarian had eventually, politely recommended that he 

_please be a little smarter about coming by; the shouting bothers people_. 

He was shaking again, and now he found that a vine was winding its way around his ankle. Cabeswater's way of offering comfort. But this was not comforting after the events at Aglionby.

He did not know what would happen. Could he leave this place? What if he tried and Cabeswater bound him here -- really bound him?

Since finding Persephone dead, he'd thought that maybe the most frightening thing was losing himself, going too far while scrying. But now he remembered: staying right in place was frightening too. That was the most frightening thing.

Ronan's hand closed around his. 

"Adam," he demanded. "Do we need to stay on the ley line?"

Adam was pulled back to the ache in his throat, the feel of Ronan's nails digging into his fingers. When he opened his eyes again, the BMW was flying past the dirty restaurant, the power plant, his father's favorite strip club. 

He closed his eyes again. 

"What is it?" Ronan spat out now, apropos of nothing. He made the words sound foul, like he wasn't sure he should be saying them, like he wasn't sure what to say. His hand gripped Adam's tightly, stilling it. Adam let this happen. 

"Fuck this," Ronan said. "We're going to the Barns."


	4. Chapter 4

The BMW was already halfway down the drive when Adam realized that it would have to be looked at. He owed it to Ronan to make sure they hadn't done anything to it. So as Ronan brought the car down a path lined by apple trees and parked it just where the trees began to thicken into a proper orchard, Adam stared at all the wild greenery and tried to remember what the usual pranks were, when raven boys left their toys unattended. 

Adam had never tried anything himself, so all he had to go on were the boasts from the other boys in the trailer park. 

When Adam got out and tried to attend to the BMW, Ronan pulled him away.

"Leave it," he said. "You think that's the first time some asshole's tried to mess with it? They didn't get far anyway."

Adam didn't know how Ronan could sound so certain. Once, Gansey had parked the Camaro beyond the boundaries Aglionby boys usually frequented. Not the main, picturesque road with its antique stores; not the vibrantly shabby area where Blue lived; not the wild and beautiful country parts beyond the town itself. Not Nino's or the subdivisions, which were raven boy territory. Only one of the dustier, older, uglier backlots. That was where the real Henrietta was. This time it had been an abandoned strip mall emitting a promising frequency to Gansey's EMF reader. Gansey and the others had cheerfully picked their way through the ruined stores and empty mini mart and abandoned preschool. Adam had posted himself anxiously near the doorways and watched the car.

He still did not know what would have been worse: seeing the Camaro destroyed for a joke, or just seeing the two worlds smash together. Gansey's, and his. Aglionby, and the trailer park. His Henrietta was not Gansey's Henrietta. It was not even Blue's Henrietta. In a way, this should have made it better to have Ronan eventually witness the collision. Ronan did not have a Henrietta. He was from the Barns, and the Barns was a world in its own right. So Ronan could not possibly have mistaken Adam for someone from his universe. Ronan had never pretended that Adam was. This should have made it better. 

It didn't. Now, with the golden-red leaves crackling underfoot, the casual way Ronan snapped fat red apples off the branches and shoved them into his pockets and Adam's, Adam felt even more ashamed than before. 

"They probably did something to your car," he said.

"It's a dream car," Ronan said. "It never needs gas and it always has a full pack of orange tic tacs in the glove compartment, and the last time some redneck fucker tried to mess with it, my dad and I found him gagged in the trunk three hours later, traumatized."

_Traumatized by what?_ Adam thought, but didn't ask. Ronan tugged him in deeper. The trees became taller and thicker. Soon they found another path, cobbled this time. The cobbles were made of some pearly rock. They made this path seem too dainty and civilized for the wild forest around them. It didn't fit with the Barns, nor with rare, casual mentions of Ronan's father. Aggressive cars, trauma inflicted on the locals.

The path led to three towering trees and a slatted wood staircase that went up, up, up into the boughs. There, a beautiful house floated comfortably one hundred feet above the ground. 

"Your dad dreamed this?" Adam said. It seemed like a dream. The house had a huge verandah, large columns, many-paned windows, a cupola, three separate towers. It was not a house. It was a fairy castle.

"My dad built this," Ronan said. Then, "I think."

He pulled Adam up the stairs. Adam glanced periodically over his shoulder as he climbed, watched the real world descend beneath them, the tops of the trees sink below. The porch, when they reached it, was covered in a fine layer of dust. Ronan's shoes left marks that revealed the white paint underneath. He absentmindedly wiped the dust off the glass in the french doors, then swung them open and pulled Adam into the darkened room beyond.

Even before Ronan switched on the lights, Adam saw the delicate glass chandelier and the lovely paneled mirror set above the fireplace and thought, _Aurora_.

The fairy-tale look of the place was certainly not Ronan Lynch. But Ronan stalked through the house entirely at ease, shoving boxes into hall closets and picking up the more offensively useful elements -- power tools and crates of men's things -- and sticking these under tablecloths where they couldn't be seen. He cursed Declan as he did this, but it sounded like a routine sort of cursing. Then, when everything seemed to have been set right and the house was as it should be, down to its tinkling fountains and lace curtains and honest-to-god golden harp, Ronan looked at Adam expectantly.

Adam was not sure what to say.

"This was your mom's place," he guessed.

Ronan nodded.

The light inside this treehouse was peculiar. The leaves crowded around the windows and danced shadows all along the white walls. It made Ronan look somehow young, and abruptly Adam remembered. The reason he'd pulled Ronan from detention. The reason he'd diverted the ley line in the first place. He'd been so wrapped up in his own terror that he hadn't even bothered to address it.

"She can come back," he told Ronan now. "Someday. To this world. You were right. That stuff in detention -- that was me --"

He broke off. Thinking of it made him choke again. Cabeswater locking him approvingly into place.

"I know it was you," Ronan said, rolling his eyes.

"Me flooding the line," Adam said. "Breaking it open. Making the whole world like -- like Cabeswater. Or that part of the world, anyway. Like you wanted to do, for your mom and Matthew."

Ronan stared at him. Adam didn't have anyone like Aurora and Matthew, he didn't have a golden mother, a beloved little brother. 

He knew he'd never understand what they meant to Ronan. He wasn't pretending to. He only wanted Ronan to know that Adam could do this for him. Surely that was enough. Surely he didn't have to understand, or do it for Matthew and Aurora. Surely it was enough to do what he'd done for Ronan alone.

He closed his eyes, blocking out the fairy palace. He wasn't meant to be here. 

"Never mind," he said. "Forget it. I didn't mean--"

"You meant to break me out of detention," Ronan growled, sounding furious, like he'd caught Adam in a sudden lie.

"Yeah," Adam said. "I did. I just wanted to show you what I could do. That I've been working on it. I got an afternoon off and I just wanted to show you."

It was stupid, hollow justification for a stupid, reckless afternoon. Adam felt as though he'd come at this all wrong. To Adam, this had really been about impressing Ronan. But to Ronan, loosing the line was sacred. It was about family. 

Ronan stepped closer and touched Adam's wrist. Adam opened his eyes.

"Cool," Ronan said. It was an awkward and breezy word in his mouth, too breezy for Ronan. It took Adam several seconds to register that he'd said it.

"Cool?" Adam repeated.

Ronan looked irritated. "Yeah, Parrish, it was cool. I told you it was cool. You made Skip Whittaker shit himself. Badass."

"I'm not badass," Adam pointed out. "I couldn't even defend your car."

"You could have," Ronan said. "You didn't, but you could have." 

Something in his tone was harsh and enraged on this point. More enraged than usual. Ronan was often enraged. Or he had been, when Adam had first met him. These days he constantly revealed new sides of himself. Adam's role seemed to be to sit on the sidelines and gawk, too stupid to realize he'd never really know Ronan Lynch.

As if to underscore this, Ronan took Adam by the hand and pulled him into an airy room full of plants in porcelain pots. They must have been dream plants, because they were covered in dust and had clearly not been watered for some time, but were still alive. Ronan cracked open a window and then collapsed facedown into a nearby hammock, swinging absentmindedly to and fro. He gestured at a rocking chair drowning in cushions. Adam sat on it gingerly. It was soft and uncertain, like he was sitting on a cloud.

"My dad built this place for her," Ronan said.

"You think," Adam supplied.

"Yes, Parrish, I think. Stop interrupting. He built it because he rest of the Barns was made for him. He wanted her to have some place that was her place. Some place he said she could be comfortable in, some place like her home, because she wasn't from here."

"He told you she was from a dream?" Adam asked.

"He told me she was from Santa Barbara," Ronan growled, still facedown in the hammock.

"And you thought Santa Barbara was full of fancy tree houses?" Adam asked.

Ronan lifted a single hand and extended a single finger. The middle one. He said, "It's not like you've ever been, poor boy."

"Have you?" Adam said back.

He couldn't understand why anyone would think Aurora -- ever-smiling, ever-pleasant, never judgmental, never unkind, never ready to say _maybe it was_ your _fault_  -- could be anything other than exactly what she was. Which was vaguely unreal. 

Ronan growled out, "She's always been easygoing. Very West Coast."

"Sure," Adam said. By now he'd sunk fully into the rocking chair. It made something in Adam line up properly, like the ley line had. He was vaguely frightened and entirely seduced. 

For his part, Ronan flopped over in the hammock, somehow managing not to fall out of it. The fragile light of Aurora's fairy palace played on his face. He looked wonderfully profane here. Adam looked away. 

"He wanted to give her her own place," Ronan said now. "He wanted her to be happy."

Adam didn't know what to say to this. It was obvious that Ronan's strange, magnificent parents had loved each other. Ronan had to come from such a union. Deserved to come from it. He was strange and magnificent himself. Adam stared his hands and let the silence stretch. He didn't feel equipped to discuss Ronan's parents. 

Ronan shifted now, and something in his pocket crackled. He drew it out. It was the paper he'd been scribbling on in detention.

"Here," he said, shoving it Adam's direction.

Adam smoothed it out. Ronan's handwriting was wild, nearly illegible. It took Adam a few moments to decipher the title at the top of the page.

"Caravaggio Was A Psycho."

Adam blinked at this. It failed to make sense after the first blink. Or the second. He scanned the rest of the page, then the back. Two pages of tightly crammed, beautiful handwriting. Mostly saying things like, "For example, one time Caravaggio threw a plate of artichokes at a waiter," and also "Caravaggio turned a tennis match into a sword fight," and also the fairly admiring, "It is possible that Caravaggio believed that, if he had to be a painter and not just a--" and here 'badass' was crossed out and replaced with 'very tough person,' "then he would go ahead and be the actual Antichrist of Painting, which in addition to the actual paintings makes him pretty unforgettable."

At the end, Ronan had some cursory discussion of chiaroscuro. Two sentences, to be specific. 

"Is this supposed to be our art history essay?" Adam said.

"Supposed to be? Fuck off, second-place-in-Latin."

"That's a different subject, Adam said. "And this is lighter on the art than the history."

"Fitz knows I know the art. I aced his drawing class."

"I heard you drew a dick in his drawing class."

"Maybe he thought it was a lifelike dick. He would know. But I got a B in that class."

Adam remembered now why it could be such a surprise to discover that Ronan was in fact very impressive. 

"I thought you said you weren't doing this essay," he said. 

There had been a chorus of groans after Fitz had explained that, since some people had not bothered to finish their powerpoints in time for presentations (Ronan), and some people had not bothered to write anything for their in-class essays (Ronan), and some people had walked out of class during the film on Michelangelo and never returned (Ronan) -- then all people would be turning in an extra-credit essay. 

Ronan had promptly declared to the class that he wasn't doing it. Adam, who would have been snappish about this a year ago, had been willing to let him have that. If they all had to do it, it was hardly extra credit anyway. 

"He'll just punish the rest of you and let you know it's my fault," Ronan said now, surly about it. "I might as well do it."

"It is your fault," Adam said. "And you don't care what the rest of the class thinks." 

"Look, do you want to end up doing some bullshit extra assignment just because I didn't do this one?" 

Adam didn't, so he didn't answer. It still seemed odd that Fitz's ploy against Ronan had worked. Ronan was the bane of teachers, and Adam, who'd once despised the casual way he could dismiss even the most overbearing professor, now hated to see him defeated so easily.

"Thanks, I guess," he told Ronan. "I wouldn't mind if you didn't do it. For the record. But thanks."

For a moment, Ronan looked like he was trying to make a _you're welcome_ fit into his mouth, but couldn't find space for it and wasn't willing to dig around for any. Instead he muttered, "Yeah, well. School matters to you. You want to go to college." 

And just like that, Adam's problem returned with full force.

"I don't know if I can," he admitted.

It was good to say it. It was good to name the problem. Once you had identified the problem, solutions were supposed to be easy. Only now he couldn't see any solutions in sight.

"Cabeswater will want me here," he told Ronan. He stared up at the ceiling as he said it. He didn't want to look at Ronan. He put the problem together instead. "It will want me here and it can keep me here. When I went too far -- when I went to D.C -- I think it might have tried to call me back. I think it tried to take control of me and make me walk back--"

He'd never talked about this with Ronan before. He'd assumed that Gansey had filled him in. The horror of D.C., and the ugliness and rage of that Adam who'd been there. This was not something he particularly wanted to bare to Ronan. He suspected Ronan already knew and understood, and it fell to Adam to be pathetic and grateful that Ronan had never once tried to talk to him about it.

But now Adam himself was talking. He felt as though the words were being forced out of his throat. 

"--and I did walk. I think it might have made the line surge back then, might have tried to flood it and make it change course to reach me, get me back. And today it locked me in place."

By now his voice was wavering, unpleasantly accented. He had tried so hard to believe that Cabeswater could be different, that it was not his father. It had seemed briefly believable. The forest had protected him. And Persephone's words had given him hope.

But she was gone now, and he could feel the vines tying him down again.

"I don't think it'll let me go to college," he finished. "I don't know if it'll want me to go at all."

A bitter, loathsome part of him was convinced that Ronan would say something like, "I told you so." Ronan had insisted that Adam did not need college. Ronan had insisted time and time again that all Adam needed was Cabeswater. It would seem that Cabeswater agreed, and Cabeswater had the ability to keep Adam locked here, in Henrietta. 

But Adam found Ronan leaning over him suddenly, blocking out the ceiling. He looked furious, but then he usually did.

"Wait here," he barked. Then he was through the glass-paneled doors and in the main room. Adam saw him tugging boxes out from under the table again, rifling through the contents with abandon. It was several minutes before he found what he wanted. 

He dropped it at Adam's feet. Them. He dropped them at Adam's feet. A pair of worn brown boots. They were boots for working, ugly and cheap and serviceable. Adam was wearing a similar pair, except his were probably even cheaper.

Ronan sat down on the floor and pulled off his own shoes. Adam stared down at him as he pulled on the boots.

"Come on," he told Adam. He was tying the left boot. Adam found the right boot, foot and all, dropped in his lap.  

"You want me to tie your shoe?" Adam asked, disbelieving.

"Tie the fucking shoe," Ronan confirmed. Then as Adam took hold of the leather cord laces, "Where do you want to go, anyway? For college?"

There was something too casual to this. Ronan overdid it. And Ronan, keeper of secrets, wild and unapologetic, never overdid it. Adam paused in making a knot and stared at him, and Ronan looked away, enraged again. Adam immediately felt sorry for it. There had been a brief period of busy purpose to Ronan, and for all that Ronan always made himself seem above busy purpose, it had suited him well. 

"Stanford," Adam said, turning back to the boot in his lap and double-knotting it firmly. "Caltech. MIT. Yale. I don't know. Someplace good."

Adam could not afford to be choosy. He could dream of it, but he could not afford it. Out. He wanted out. And he wanted to be able to look at them all -- at Whittaker and Quimby and Sloane and even Gansey, especially Gansey -- and know that he had finally caught a corner of something every one of them could grasp as easily as breathing.

And he thought he could be proud, then. That he had worked three jobs for it. That he put off sleep for it. That he had been born in a trailer, but he had not stayed there.

There was a pulse in him that had always thought he could do more. He thought about it as his own internal ley line, as a vein of energy. But really it was only the infrequent, unbidden thought that he had not deserved this hit or that smack, that he was not meant to work until his joints ached, that he could wear a suit, go to Aglionby, someday ignore the contents of his bank account.

This was not a clean, pure thing. More often it was bitter, the bitter heart of him. It cut. But he needed it. He could not hate it. It was his. 

Ronan's foot smacked his lap. Adam pushed it off in response. Ronan didn't seem to notice.

"Where else?" Ronan said impatiently.

"It doesn't matter," Adam said, leaning back and closing his eyes. 

Ronan snorted. "Fine. I'll fucking say it. Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth. Brown. God, I hope not Brown. Brown's a roller coaster with books. And it's not on the line."

Adam's eyes snapped open.

"How would you know?" he asked. 

In response, Ronan maneuvered himself upright carefully, oddly. It was all in his upper body; he seemed careful not to move his legs. Adam stared at him.

"You should go fucking overseas if you want to get away from it this badly, Parrish," Ronan said now, his voice bitter and heavy with something unknown. It was such a drastic change from the Ronan of a few seconds ago that Adam could hardly process it. Then, mocking, "Think there are no trailers in Oxford? Hong Kong? Timbuktu? Could you be happy there?"

Adam flushed. 

"Fuck off," he snapped.

"Fine," Ronan said, and stepped toward the window.

And was gone.

It took Adam a few seconds to realize. He was _gone_. He'd been there, and now he wasn't. Adam abandoned the easy comfort of the chair to run to the window and shout his name. The foliage below said nothing in response. Adam ran out of the room and down the stairs, frantic. No Ronan. No Ronan anywhere, not on the forest floor, not in the treehouse, not in any of its rooms crammed with boxes and plants and strange dolls, cordless electronics and humming instruments and furniture that sprouted flowers. 

After twenty minutes of fruitless search, he backed into the room with the rocking chair and sat, blinking, at the wall. He felt extremely present and extremely furious. His nails wore grooves into the arms of the seat and his every muscle resisted the cushions. He did not think he should leave, because some part of him was certain Ronan would return. Ronan Lynch, impossible boy, dreamer, creator, de-facto master of this strange treetop domain, would return. 

So Adam sat in the treehouse, seething. He had revealed his problem, and in response -- what? Ronan had left.

Another twenty minutes passed.

"Hey," Ronan said.

He was standing in front of the rocking chair, light from the window playing on the harsh planes of his face. He had not been there a moment ago, and Adam's brain attempted to explain this. Adam's bitter heart would not give it the chance. He'd been staring into empty space long enough to know that Ronan's sudden appearance was inexplicable.

Ronan dropped something in Adam's lap. Boots. No feet in them this time. 

"Put them on," he said, voice still odd and heavy.

"I'm leaving," Adam told him coldly. 

"Sure," Ronan said. "We fucking covered that, didn't we?" He squatted at Adam's feet and it was again a strange maneuver, like he didn't want to move his legs but wanted to get down low enough to start tugging at Adam's work boots.

"What are you doing?" Adam snapped.

"Helping you leave," Ronan said. He looked as though he would rather be doing anything else.

"You vanished--"

"I didn't want to dream in front of you," Ronan said, talking over him. "I needed to make another pair."

"Another--"

"Put them on," Ronan said. He pulled off one of Adam's boots and tossed it over his shoulder. Adam kicked at him instinctively and he grabbed hold of Adam's foot with one hand, steadied himself on the rocking chair with the other. He still seemed to not want to move his lower body. Adam felt briefly ludicrous. Ronan was now trying to force one of the newly-dreamt boots onto his foot.

Adam took his foot back. In a few minutes he had the new boots on.

"What are they?" he asked Ronan. The dreaming power being what it was, he could think up a million explanations. "Do they make you invisible?"

Ronan stood and pulled him out of the chair. In an instant they were very close, and it happened so quickly that Adam hardly had time to reflect on it. Ronan was taller than he was, limbs longer, chest warm. He smelled far more scrubbed than he looked. His lashes were very thick. 

He snorted. "I didn't say I'd make you invisible," he said. "I said I'd help you leave. Come on. "

He stepped forward, as though to back Adam into the rocking chair, but instead of colliding with the furniture Adam felt _tugged_. Something whistled past his ear.

When he fell back, he fell onto cold marble, and the room above them was dark and cool. It smelled heavy and secretive, like a church. St. Agnes. No. Too much gold leaf. Adam could see a pale white moon through a half-dome skylight. He blinked. His brain was not reaching for explanations, because there weren't any, and his heart was pounding.

Ronan cursed and rolled off of him, and Adam heard him tugging off his boots. Then he was tugging off Adam's boots. Then someone screamed. When Adam turned towards the noise, he saw a pale habit, a frightened face. It took him a moment to try and process the words she was shouting -- these days, it always took him an extra moment to process what he was hearing -- but then he realized that he could not process them. They were not in English.

Ronan was still swearing and tugging at his boots.

"Come on, Parrish," he snapped at Adam, "You want to take another step and end up in Idaho?"

He succeeded in pulling off Adam's right boot. He threw it at Adam. It hit Adam in the chest. Adam let it.

"Idaho?" he said. "Are we in Ida--"

"Don't be stupid," said Ronan. "We're in Italy. Take your shoes off or they'll take you someplace shitty instead." 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most anticlimactic trip to Italy ever, yo.
> 
> Also, I feel like I should mention that I dislike some of the things Ronan says here, and for that matter some of the things Adam says. They need to be called on their shit. And in fact they will be.

Specifically, they were in Rome. Ronan had chosen Rome for their destination. He'd apparently wanted to see Caravaggios. He seemed to think that Adam should have guessed this about him, intuited his secret genuine appreciation for Caravaggio's art, even though this hadn't been clear given his essay, which had mostly discussed Caravaggio's greatest fights and most memorable public tantrums. 

Now Ronan, cursing a blue streak along the banks of a dark river -- the Tiber, Adam's shocked mind supplied -- was emulating this unexpected idol. Adam sat on an ancient staircase and watched him. 

He surprised even himself with how much he wanted to watch Ronan. He rarely let himself do it, and now, for once, he wanted to watch everything else too. Everything here was a different shape, everything was crammed in, everything was claustrophobic and heavy and old. It was St. Agnes dialed up to impossible proportions, only forty times as magnificent and fifty times as filthy. Adam felt heady with the change. He felt as though there had been some mistake, and maybe Ronan had meant to bring Gansey along instead. Gansey would understand a place like this. Or Blue. Blue would know how to explore it properly.

Adam had never really expected to visit Italy, and he'd certainly never expected to visit Italy in his socks. 

Both pairs of Ronan's seven-league boots -- which were really more like five thousand mile boots, once Adam did a quick calculation -- sat insouciantly on the walkway by the river. They seemed to dare Adam to put them back on again, to right this. He was Henrietta dirt through and through, but he was not in Henrietta right now. He was in Italy. The occasional passersby were speaking Italian. He was in _Italy_.

Which Ronan seemed determined to find fault with, because he had not been allowed to examine the Caravaggios. Really, Adam thought he was annoyed at disrupting the peace of the church. Ronan was irreverent enough with St. Agnes, but that was because he treated St. Agnes like an extension of his home. This was not his home; this was nowhere near it. 

"It's like ten o'clock at night here," Adam offered, after a minute. "There was no way that church was going to be open."

In response, Ronan dropped onto the stone step next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, Adam could see him worrying the bands on his wrists. It was a private gesture. Adam turned away to look across the river. There were lights on a distant bridge, lights and people and statues of angels, and a large round castle glowing gold. They had stepped across the ocean and into a dream. Ronan had. Ronan had done this. How had Adam thought he could impress this boy with nothing more than the ley line and a few birds?

The ley line. Something in Adam snapped to attention. 

He could not feel the ley line.

He focused on the lights beyond the bridge, the glimmering gold of the castle. He was not sure that he wanted to scry, but Cabeswater was miles away. Surely it could not pin him down here. He burned with hope. Maybe Cabeswater would not be able to reach him at all. Maybe he could be his own man here, free and uncontained. 

Water was good, candles were better; anything could be water, anything could be candles. Getting lost was very easy. 

His hand found Ronan's hand. When he grasped it, Ronan stiffened.

"Sorry," Adam said shortly. "I want to try and see if I can find the ley line, but I need you to pull me back if I go too far. Like how Blue's done it." He and Blue had discussed this a week ago in front of the others. He hoped Ronan remembered. He told Ronan, "I might need you do that for me right now. I've still got that knife in my pocket if you need it. I'm going to look for the line."

He amended this. 

" _A_ line."

There was more than one, after all. According to Gansey, they crisscrossed the globe. It had taken Gansey years of search before he'd settled on their line, the line that held Glendower, the line that ran through Henrietta. 

Now Adam felt as though he were unspooling this story in reverse, melting into the gold lights of the castle and letting himself discover this new place -- just as ancient, entirely different. He spent some time simply seeing what he could of it. Everything was unexpected, nothing was what he might have asked for -- but who cared when it was so new? It was too crammed, too busy, he could follow the pulse of so many people laughing, fighting, eating, dancing. Then he followed the still things. There were too many ruins and there was too much river. There were fountains, churches, nightclubs, stores, restaurant. Crumbling palaces and well-kept churches, elegant piazzas and filthy alleys. Centuries-old corners populated entirely by stray cats, and catacombs toured by thrilled people. 

This was not Henrietta. 

_This was not Henrietta_. 

Something about Adam went limp with strange, unexpected joy. Then--

There. There. There _was_ a line here. Right there. But it was not his line; it felt clearer and more defined, less marred by problem-spots and missed connections. He could not feel Cabeswater anywhere along it. 

He could not feel Cabeswater at all. 

Abruptly, he missed it. The part of him that could still think wondered why, why he cared. It was a missing like missing his mother, a pain that he knew it would be wiser not to have and half-hated himself for. He felt himself thinning out along the new ley line, searching for Cabeswater desperately. He could not help it. He was not a thinking thing now; he had no choice. He missed in spite of himself.

He felt the presence of a million beings along and below, infinite ancients to bolster this line, infinite spots along it humming with energy, bright and ancient pieces of magic passing into it and out of it, moving on and off of the line. Yet none of them was _his_.

There was a sudden, blooming pain in his shoulder.

He snapped back to himself. When he opened his eyes, he was pressed against the side of the stair. He saw Ronan and the night sky and several tourists above him. Ronan looked furious; the tourists concerned. They asked if Adam was alright in more than one language. One tried to pull Ronan away from him, and was treated to a flurry of swears and violence. Adam pulled him back now, instinctively.

"I'm fine," he told the small crowd around them. "I'm fine. Sorry. Sorry." He had no idea how to say it in Italian. "Paenitet," he tried, hoping this would get it across. "Me paenitet." 

Then he scooped up both pairs of seven-league boots and began walking along the bank, away from the crowd. He trusted Ronan to follow. His head buzzed with emptiness -- he was well and truly away from Cabeswater, away from his bargain. Forget the missing, he told himself. Forget the missing. Was this all it took to be free? Distance? His throat was dry. This way out was so easy that he could not make himself trust it.

"What the _fuck_ ," Ronan said, catching up to him. 

"I could have said that to you a few times today," Adam said. He dumped the boots into Ronan's arms and massaged his shoulder, where he could tell from experience a bruise would be forming. He was strangely grateful to have Ronan here and not Blue; Blue had a tendency to bring him back to his body by drawing blood. Adam did not want to bleed here. He did not know what he wanted, but it was not that. Above them, Rome sprouted on either side of the river. It was too large and well-lit a city to be truly dark, but it was still so new to Adam's eyes that every shadow seemed fantastic and every building an impossible trick of the night. The pavement felt hard and wet through his socks, and beneath them, about a mile away, he could now make out the strange new ley line. 

It had felt whole in a way that theirs did not. It had felt alive, and wonderfully powerful, and busy. It had felt _repaired_. 

This was why Cabeswater wanted him. This. The difference between this line, vibrant and unmarred, and theirs. That was what Adam had pledged himself to fix.

To know that he was abandoning that, that he was an ocean away, traitorous -- he felt sick. How self-absorbed he was, how myopic. There were greater needs in the world than Adam Parrish's needs, no matter how much they tore at him. He stopped walking and steadied himself on one wall of the bank. 

Then he realized that he was alone.

Ronan had stopped following him. He was sitting on the pavement several feet behind, savagely hitting it with the steel toe of one of his boots. Pieces chipped off. He flung them into the Tiber. The arc of his arm was ferocious. Adam walked back and sat next to him. The cold wet seeped into his jeans. He wondered if he had a clean pair for tomorrow.

"If you break the boots, will they still work?" he asked, after a moment. "We have to get back."

He had to get back. It was ludicrous, thinking that he could stay here. Someone like Adam was not meant to leave Henrietta this way. It was too easy, too wonderful. It seemed a uniquely Ronan Lynch method: do the impossible, and fuck all your problems. Adam's life did not work like that. 

"We have to go back," he told Ronan now. "The line back home still needs someone to fix it. Me."

Other, greater demands now pressed in. "And Gansey's there, and Blue--"

Ronan whirled on him. 

"I want to go back," he said fercely. "You think I wanted to leave? No one ever beat _me_. I didn't have to leave."

Adam wondered what it was like to be Ronan Lynch and have only two settings: angry, and before-angry. From the perspective of an onlooker, it was tiresome. He could not diagnose what had set Ronan off this time. He could barely begin to guess at what had set Ronan off last time. The thought of helping Adam leave when he did not want Adam to go? It should feel unlikely, this idea of Adam motivating Ronan in any way. But it fit, somehow. 

Maybe this was Ronan Lynch. Every outburst would serve to illuminate the outburst that had come before it. But Adam was terribly used to rage meaning nothing at all, to being the kind of thing you endured. You learned that it was no use dissecting it. Maybe that was why this tired him so much.

"I'm sorry you're angry," he said now. 

There was something extraordinarily Gansey about this -- _I'm_ sorry that _you're_ angry. Adam had actually been made to feel sorry about other people's rage, and so he rarely said things like this; you did not say this when sorry was your only option. You did not say this if you were sorry at all.

But. But Ronan had not had to bring him here. Ronan could have left him to Cabeswater's mercy. Still could. He could take his miraculous boots and throw them in the Tiber, or blow them up, or simply withhold them. But Adam didn't think he would. And it meant something, that Ronan had seen him despair about leaving Henrietta and had chosen to show him that there could be a way out.

"I'm sorry," he tried again. That felt truer. 

Ronan snorted. When Adam looked at him, he had stilled and was no longer attacking the pavement, but the bend of his mouth was still mocking.

"What are you sorry for, Parrish?" he said. He worried at a piece of cracked pavement with his nail. Adam thought for a moment before responding. _Sorry_ felt like a permanent state sometimes, a way of being. And sometimes he was sorriest of all that he could not endure that, that the bitter core of him would always, always chafe at it. 

But he did not want to be sorry for wanting more. And he was glad that there was also a part of him that refused to be sorry for it.

"I want to leave," he told Ronan evenly. "I need to."

In response, Ronan lifted an arm and gestured in the direction of the castle. Adam followed the line of this arm with his eyes -- Ronan was not so muscled as Gansey, but longer-limbed, thinner and yet wilder. His arm made a swoop over the whole far bank, the low-hanging trees and the walkway and the buildings and the golden light.

"We didn't have to leave to see this," he told Adam. "I could bring all this back and put it in the Barns if I wanted. I could bring whatever you want. I could fill every fucking corner of that town with whatever you want, until you couldn't even recognize it anymore."

It was not a boast. On someone like Kavinsky, it would have been a boast, but coming from Ronan it was not. It was not even what he was really saying. Ronan might not lie outright, but he could thread truths deep beneath other truths, and Adam heard the terror beneath the conviction. 

What was it like, to know you could have whatever you wanted, to know you could make whatever you wanted? 

Ronan brought his arm down again, and now Adam could see the jagged, fresh cut along his forearm. Now Adam remembered why he liked to dream alone.

"You'd hurt yourself," he told Ronan shortly. "And it wouldn't make any difference."

Henrietta dust coated in marvels and dreams would still be Henrietta dust. Adam would know. He'd been stripped of his Cabeswater bargain for less than an hour, and he was no less himself. But he was _less_. Not less for lack of Cabeswater, but less for avoiding the problem, less for walking away. Less for throwing his problems on Ronan when they were not Ronan's to fix.

"I want to go to Cabeswater," he told Ronan now. "I think I should talk to it. I've been treating it like it wants me for no reason, like it's just out to hurt me, and that's not true. I gave it my hands and my eyes, and it wanted them for a reason--"

"To fix the ley line," Ronan grunted, and lobbed another piece of pavement at the Tiber.

"Someone's fixed the one here," Adam said.

Briefly, he wondered who that someone could be. If Blue and Gansey were here, they would not rest until they knew. They shared that, Adam realized. A common curiosity, a deep need to unearth secrets. Adam was not like them. He'd kept too many ugly secrets to want secrets unearthed purely on principle. 

He leaned back on his hands and stared at the dark water. It was so late here and there was so much _noise_ , people laughing somewhere out of sight, cars honking. He wondered if it was like this in other cities. He would find out. Somehow. And he would do right by Cabeswater as well.

"The line here is brighter," he told Ronan. "It's got more power, more life to it. There's no point that's not connected to the others, no weak spot. I can feel everything on it, and some parts are old and magic like Cabeswater, and some are small, beings like your mother. But they're better and stronger, though. They live, they--"

He faltered. He remembered something. 

"They _move_ ," he said. He had felt that. He had felt the energy along this Roman ley line, the way parts of it could detach and jump on and off. The magic here was not constrained. This ley line was a river, but its denizens moved on and off of it. It was so firm and well-maintained that they could feed off of its overwhelming power even from a distance. 

Adam had several thoughts at once. One was that he could not imagine how this had been accomplished. Admittedly, he hadn't seen much of Rome since they'd been thrown out of the church and he'd had to follow a swearing Ronan down to the river, but what he had seen was crowded, overwhelming. What did it take to be the caretaker of a place like this? How many magicians did you need to keep this line so bright? Could one magician even do it?

But he also thought, "I don't need to open up the ley line."

"What?" Ronan said.

Adam had not simply thought it, but said it. He said it again. Then he added to it, putting the pieces together as he said them aloud, "Anything magic, anything that needs the ley line's energy can thrive no matter where it is, if the line is strong enough. If the line is strong enough, it can -- can transmit its strength."

Persephone had been right. He did not need to channel the line. It could channel itself, free itself, if only he helped it. If only he fixed it, like he'd always been supposed to.

If he could fix their ley line, then Aurora and Matthew could be free. He could make it like this line, so powerful that Ronan's family could live off of its energy regardless of whether they were in Cabeswater or not, regardless of whether their makers lived or not.

"I need to scry again," he said now. "I want to see this line more closely. If I can make our line like this one, then your mom goes free."

He held out his hand again. Ronan looked at it like it was a snake. Adam could hardly understand this. 

"If I go too far, I need you to bring me back," he explained. 

In response, Ronan threw a pair of seven-league-boots at him.

They came nowhere near him, but Adam ducked on instinct and watched the boots clatter on the pavement. When he turned back to Ronan, Ronan was tugging his own pair on.

"I need to see the line," Adam said again, more furiously this time. "This is for _you_. For your mother, for Matthew."

Adam needed to see what his handiwork could look like if he managed to fix the ley line back home. Maybe he couldn't reason with Cabeswater. Maybe he would never be his own man again, would never have the future he wanted. But at least now he knew what the payoff could be. 

"I'm not fucking hitting you again," Ronan spat.

Adam blinked at him.

"That's not the point," he said, annoyed. Was this what had upset Ronan? His shoulder hardly hurt.

Ronan said nothing. He was lacing up his first boot by now.

"I asked you to do it," Adam tried, after a minute. "I'm asking you now because it'll help your mother. It could help _Matthew_."

Ronan's face was merciless. 

"Is that a fucking white trash joke?" he said. "Put your boots on, and stop pretending like you know what it's like to do something because you love somebody. I didn't want to hit you. You don't get to ask me to hit you. You can fucking leave if you want, but you don't get to do that."

It was hard to look powerful and furious while shrugging on a pair of boots, but Ronan managed. Adam stared at him, uncomprehending.

"I just needed you to bring me back," he said. "Why does it matter if you hit me? You pushed me around in a shopping cart once. And you hit people all the time."

Something crossed Ronan's face, brief and soft and _hurt_. Everything narrowed to that something. Adam could feel it as clearly as he could feel the ley line back home. 

He thought that maybe he'd seen it before, been around it before. But now he knew what it was. It was like how he'd been around the ley line all his life, and yet it was only lately that he'd started to feel and know its magic.

"Stop it," Ronan said now. "I hate when people fake being stupid. Come on. We're leaving."

Adam closed his eyes and reached for the boots. Around him, Rome sparkled, but he didn't care about that anymore. He knew what had been written across Ronan's face. He wanted to see it there again. He'd wanted to see it there all day; he just hadn't bothered to be honest with himself about it. And he would not tell himself that he was imagining it this time, that he was being egotistical. He _was_ egotistical. But this -- this thing in Ronan. This was no ego boost.

They were silent as Adam laced up his boots and stood, careful not to move his feet, mindful of Ronan's warnings about ending up in Idaho. Ronan reached out and grabbed his arms again.

"How do you get them to go where you want?" Adam asked, before they took a step. "How do you not end up in Idaho?"

He was curious, and, more than that, he felt like he should say something. He wanted to say something, to let Ronan know he was not angry. To _fix_ it. When Ronan said nothing in response, he lifted his own hands and locked them onto Ronan's arms. Ronan went unnaturally still at this, and Adam searched his face, looking for that brief softness again. 

But Ronan was too good at keeping his secrets.

"Don't worry," he said harshly. "I'll teach you how to use them when we get back. Then you can leave on your own."

"That wasn't what I--" Adam began.

Then Ronan pulled him in and stepped back, and something was tugging them again. Adam's working ear was alive with the sound of sheer, impossible, lightning-fast movement. Five thousand miles or so of it. They fell onto a wintry snowbank this time, surrounded by familiar trees.

Cabeswater, like Adam had asked. He pulled off his boots without being told to this time. He also pretended that they hadn't just crossed an ocean, because he still wanted to explain himself.

"That wasn't what I meant," he repeated. "Ronan, that's not what I--"

He broke off. 

One of the trees had moved. It had not moved the way trees were supposed to move. There was no wind to make it rustle, for one thing. For another, it didn't rustle as much as sprint, a flash of gnarled bark and dark leaves moving from one copse to another, moving fast.

"Did you see that?" he asked Ronan.

Ronan, trying to undo his laces, only grunted.

"Ronan, did you see that?" 

There was a soft exhale somewhere between them. Adam turned to find Noah sitting in the snow. Adam's jeans and jacket were by now soaked through, and Ronan's clothing was no better, but Noah was as unaffected by Cabeswater's surreal wintry spots as he was by anything else. The edges of him seemed to fade faintly into the winter around them; that was all. He put an insubstantial hand on Ronan's arm.

"Don't," he said. "Don't. You should go."

Ronan stared at him. Then Ronan started, thrown by something he saw just beyond. Adam turned around and caught a glimpse of it again -- the moving tree. This time it looked less like a tree. The bark was still there, and so were the patterns of the leaves. But Adam could make out branches twisted into the shape of limbs, two bright blue flowers like eyes.

"What the hell is that?" Ronan breathed out.

"It didn't like that he left," Noah said. "Cabeswater didn't like Adam leaving at all."


	6. Chapter 6

Whatever the thing was, it had come from the Dreaming Tree.

Noah did not tell them this. Aurora did. They found her in the Autumn, sharpening sticks into spears and arrows, nightdress torn to make a slingshot. She had built a circle of makeshift defenses around her, thorns and vines and leaves shaped cunningly into traps. They'd been looking for her to protect her -- the thing in the trees was peculiarly vicious, clever enough to know to go for Ronan's hurt arm and Adam's bruised shoulder. They'd thought it might have hurt her too. 

So Adam had a thorn in his foot before they'd realized that she was fine. She was perfectly capable of defending herself. 

Noah said, "See? I told you you should just go. You don't have to defend her."

Ronan stared at his mother like he wasn't entirely sure what she was. For her part, Aurora put down her makeshift weapons and said, "Your feet, Ronan!" in agonized tones. 

It took several minutes to redirect her attention away from Ronan's wet, torn socks and back to the problem at hand. Asking her to multitask was pointless; it only made Ronan snarl at them. Aurora was not made to multitask. But when Ronan asked, she poured out what she knew.

"They were just feeling lonely and abandoned," she said. "They didn't mean to, but they dreamt something to make it better. In the tree. It's there sometimes, that tree. That dreaming tree is where they dream. At least I thought it was them dreaming. Now I don't know."

"Them?" Adam said. He pulled the thorn from his foot, wincing. The pain passed easily. He waited for a spot of red to blossom on his tattered sock, but it never came. He'd abandoned Cabeswater, but Cabeswater still seemed to be protecting him. Sort of. His shoulder hurt more than ever where the tree-creature had grabbed it, but maybe that was because it had hurt already, and he'd been hurt so far from Cabeswater that there was nothing it could have done for him.

Aurora now discovered the newly-opened scratch on Ronan's arm and gasped in horror. She ripped off another piece of her nightdress and began attempting to bandage the wound.

"Stop," Ronan said gently. He lifted her chin and redirected her attention. "Them? Who's 'them,' mom?"

"You know," Aurora said. She pointed up, left, right, all around. " _Them_."

The trees rustled.

"They lost a partner. You just can't expect anyone to go on in the normal way when they lose a partner," Aurora said. She pouted. She was a beautiful woman with Ronan's thick lashes and Ronan's finely-curved upper lip, and so this action on her was adorable, and because she was Ronan's mother, this was intensely confusing. Adam tested his aching foot and wished she would stop doing it. She did. Then she added, " _I_ fell asleep."

"I know," Ronan said tightly. "I was there, mom."

Aurora's arms were around him. Instant comfort. 

"Wow, so nice," Noah said faintly. "So nice. We don't have time for it."

Adam agreed. The thing in the trees was confused, senseless, and easy enough to shake off. But it was fast, too. And it had lunged with purposeful viciousness. 

"Ronan," he said now, "We have to get it to leave us alone, whatever it is. It's not anything good."

It seemed to want one of them, or maybe both. Or maybe just him, the wayward magician. 

"She should put up that snare again," Noah said now. He made a jerky, uncoordinated motion in the direction of the trap that had stopped Adam. 

"Mom," Ronan said again, gently pulling his mother off. "Come on. You have to focus on protecting yourself." 

If he was still surprised that she could do this, he didn't show it. He picked up one of Aurora's rough-hewn spears and passed it to her. She thanked him for it tenderly. Then she attacked it with a sharp stone, concentrating hard on making it sharper and deadlier. A corner of her tongue crept prettily out of her mouth. Ronan caught Adam and Noah staring and shoved Noah, hard.

Then he said, "It went after us. Why?" 

He didn't wait for Adam to give him an answer, but looked up at the red-gold leaves above them and barked the question at the trees. Latin came more easily to him than it ever could to Adam. Still, it took a few minutes for either of them to begin to translate back the response. Cabeswater was not clear at the best of times, and its justifications now were longer and more muddled than even Adam had expected.

"It liked leaving the line alongside you--" Ronan said, finally just talking over the trees to try and get to the point.

"Cohabiting?" Adam said. The trees whispered something that seemed to agree, but he wondered if he was hearing that right. 

" _Visiting_ you," Ronan corrected. "It's saying visiting. And being invited to visit."

"There's definitely something about me inviting it," Adam said. "Which I did, I guess. In detention."

"It wants you to take it where you are," Noah said. "She should fix that snare."

Neither Ronan nor Adam listened to him. The trees were still murmuring.

"When it had no invitation it tried to invite itself, but it wasn't strong enough to go alone," Ronan said. "So something -- something else came too? Something that's on the strongest part of the line."

"That was D.C.," Adam guessed. The trees rustled approvingly, and kept trying to explain.

"Okay, now it's talking about cohabiting," Ronan admitted, raising an eyebrow.

"Like, living together?" Adam said. His heart sank. This was not where he wanted the conversation to go. Behind them, Aurora made a noise of mild motherly disapproval, though why she cared was beyond him.

"Fuck," Ronan said now. "What does _that_ mean? It wants you to live with it? Is it really not going to let you go to college?" He stopped and switched to Latin then, shouted this question at the trees. Something in his tone was wild and uncompromising, condemnation flung right at Cabeswater. Adam's stomach twisted curiously. 

"It just wants to be where Adam is," Noah said then, hurriedly. "It doesn't care where that is; that's just what it wants. An Adam, with it. Can we fix that snare?"

"Why does it want that?" Ronan asked furiously. "Why does it think it should get that?"

Again, Adam felt he should be fair to the forest. "I _did_ bargain with it," he pointed out.

"Bargained," Ronan shouted at the trees. "Not fucking _married_. Listen, Cabeswater. Back off. I'm the Greywaren, and I'm ordering you to take your moving tree, and sh--"

There was a crack, branch hitting branch. Something moved across the space Adam had inadvertently cleared in Aurora's defenses, crushing the broken snare beneath its foot. When it came into the clearing the golden autumn light hit it full force.

It had a tall, brown-bark body, with ropes of vines to make whipcord muscles. The face was carved wood and eerie in the extreme: thin green vines for lips, those blue flowers for the eyes. The hands bloomed at the ends, some kind of carnivorous flytrap serving for the nails. The pattern of leaves along the solid trunk and legs was plainly trying and failing to emulate clothing; the dust-colored bark on the head looked nothing like proper hair.

Its eyes bloomed large, as though it could see them better that way.

"I told you," Noah whispered, as they all backed into Aurora. "I told you to fix it. It was _circling_ until it found the gap--"

"You couldn't tell us that?" Ronan snapped.

"You can't expect me to keep it all in my head!" Noah said. "And I was right. It wanted an Adam, so it made one."

A poor facsimile of Adam. Even Adam thought so. But still: clearly made to echo Adam. Adam if he'd been grown and not born, Adam if he was roots and leaves and dirt instead of blood and bones and skin. 

It opened its mouth and tried to speak, but nothing came out. The wind whipped ominously through its straight, mossy teeth.

"We can take it," Adam said, sounding somehow even less confident than he felt. "There are four of us and one of it."

"One of us is my mom and one is Noah," Ronan growled. With every step they took across the clearing, the creature took a careful two.

"Two of us and your mom is still in our favor," Adam said.

In response, Ronan said, "What does it even want?"

"I don't know. Why are you asking me?" Adam said.

"It looks like you!"

"It doesn't," Adam insisted. "Not really." He had his own questions, though. "If Cabeswater wanted a me, then why did it make an evil one?"

"I told you," Aurora piped up. "It was the dreaming tree."

They stared at her. This gave the creature enough time to spring for them. Adam felt its slimy-sharp fingers and rough bark hands close on his bruised shoulder again. He fought to push it off. It would not give. Its tongue was broad and striated with light green, like the leaves of a houseplant. Adam did not know if it wanted to eat or simply hurt him. He shoved at it ineffectually. He thought someone was yelling. He wasn't sure if it was him or Ronan. It might be him. He didn't know if it would hurt him; he didn't know if Cabeswater would or could protect him from something that Cabeswater had itself created.

Something pierced the vines on its side and ripped them off, leaving its birch-white sinews exposed. It recoiled. Adam took this chance to roll out from under it. Ronan's arms pulled him up and then they were staring at Aurora, confidently armed with another spear, slingshot tucked in the pocket of her ruined nightdress.

"Mom," Ronan said, astounded.

Horribly, this made her turn to smile at him, attention fully on her child as always. Then the creature was on her. The sound Ronan made was brutal, instinctive animal function, nothing more than rage behind it. But before he could react more than that, Aurora had pushed it off. She did not look remotely hurt. She looked like a warrior queen.

"See, I don't think they meant to make this terrible thing at _all_ ," she told them, wrinkling her nose at it.

As the creature dived for him again, Adam spared a second to agree. This was not like Cabeswater's usual work. Cabeswater was phantoms and ghosts, whispers and shadow-hedges. Vines. Claiming. But it was nothing this vicious. It didn't pursue Adam with singleminded savagery; it didn't need to. It had Adam already. 

Maybe if it didn't sense Adam, then this was what the forest warped into. But Adam didn't think so. This thing felt different from Cabeswater.

This time it was Ronan who came to his aid, smashing the creature from behind with a heavy branch. It stumbled and fell back. Ronan helped Adam up again.

"Come on," he said, drawing Adam towards the gap in Aurora's defenses. "You have to get out of here. It wants you. Let me deal with it."

Adam hardly wanted to stay and let the creature have him, but neither did he want to leave Ronan to clean this up. He pulled Ronan along after him.

"It's not Cabeswater," he said, as they broke into a run and left Aurora and Noah behind, knowing that Aurora was strong and Noah was dead and the creature would likely follow them anyway. It did seem to want Adam.

"It's not Cabeswater," he repeated as they ran. "This doesn't feel like-- it doesn't--"

He struggled to make the connection. It was difficult to feel fear and think clearly at the same time. It had always been difficult. Adam had never really gotten good at it. 

Autumn became spring, green and wet with rain. They came upon a massive boulder lodged in the mossy turf, slippery and difficult to climb. Adam pulled off his socks and climbed anyway, letting his fingers find the rare handholds. Ronan followed, cursing, and nearly fell a few times. Adam helped pull him up when he got to the top, to a ledge that was hardly big enough for the both of them. He let his legs dangle down the side to give Ronan more room. He looked down some ten feet at the forest floor.

After a moment, the creature creaked rapidly into sight, its bough-arms waving uselessly as it stared up at them. When it tried to gain traction on the rock, it could only claw uselessly against the wet, slippery stone. Adam stared down at it through the rain. He exhaled hard until his fear subsided. 

"If it's not Cabeswater," Ronan said, "then what the hell is it?"

It was harder to put this part together. Adam thought of losing himself on the ley line, bobbing to the surface in what must have been the cave of the third sleeper. The sense, back in Burwell Hall, that inviting Cabeswater to leave the line had brought something else along as well. What Aurora had said -- that she'd first thought it was the trees that had made this thing, but that she was not certain. 

The fact that Cabeswater had invited itself to D.C., but that it said it had not come unaccompanied. 

"There are other things on the ley line," Adam said. "Places, beings. Sleepers."

"Yeah. Glendower. My mom. So?" Ronan said impatiently. Water ran in rivulets down the harsh lines of his face. Adam followed its path with his eyes as he spoke.

"I think Cabeswater felt abandoned, like she said. I think it wants to be where I am, and when it couldn't tried to make something to replace me, so that it wouldn't feel lonely. And then one of these other things on the line interfered."

"Interfered with the Dreaming Tree?" Ronan said incredulously.

It made sense to Adam. 

"If all these things are sleeping and waking on the line," he said patiently, "then why do you think you're the only one capable of dreaming horrors?"

Around them, the trees whispered agreement. But Ronan just looked frustrated.

"Just because Cabeswater didn't mean to make a monster -- that doesn't fucking fix anything," he pointed out. "Now we have a monster to deal with, and you still can't go to college."

But having a monster to deal with made college seem like a problem more easily-solved. Adam leaned back against an overhang in the rock, getting out of the rain as best he could. He closed his eyes. He did not scry, because he had nothing to scry with and because Ronan would have a fit if he tried at this point. But he let his mind go still and quiet and listened to the murmur of the trees. They were worried. They were -- not quite ashamed. Adam was not sure something as ancient and large as Cabeswater could ever be ashamed. 

But when he thought deliberately about kneeling on the floor of Burwell hall, feeling the vines lock around him, when he thought deliberately about the _terror_ \--

"Me paenitet," said each tree.

It had been a mistake. Cabeswater did not think the way people did, did not behave the way people did. It had never been taught to think about what it did. Who would ever teach it?

_Me paenitet_ , Adam thought back.

But a few sorrys were hardly enough for Ronan. 

"Don't be sorry," he spat at the trees, not bothering to try for Latin. "You're going to get rid of your monster, and you're going to fucking let Adam go to college."

"I'm going to college whether it lets me or not," Adam said without opening his eyes. He did want to help Cabeswater. He did. But going to college was still important. He wanted to be able to do both. So he added, " _We_ have to get rid of the monster, though. Me and you."

He was Cabeswater's eyes and Cabeswater's hands. He'd agreed to that. And in exchange, the ley line would bloom, more powerful than before. It was a magical contract not borne of magic but simple cause and effect. The line was more awake now, but it would be more awake still. It could be stronger. Cabeswater could be stronger, more connected to all the magic around it.

It just needed his help to get there.

Again he eyed the thing stalking around the rock.

"I'll help you get rid of it," he told Cabeswater slowly. "And I'll help you fix the line somehow. I'm not going to stay forever -- I'm going to _leave_ \-- but I promise that I'll still do this for you. Somehow. I know it seems like I can't leave and still do that, but I'll find a way."

It felt good to name the conflict. Finally, properly. To find the problem and diagnose it. Once you knew the problem, solutions were easy. 

He turned to Ronan next. 

"Dream, or scry?" he said.

Ronan stared at him.

"We have to do one or the other," Adam explained. "I think it should be dream. I could try to figure out what we're up against, let myself go and find whatever it was that made it--"

" _No_ ," Ronan spat.

"Then you have to dream something to kill it," Adam said reasonably. "That's how you were going to get rid of it, wasn't it?"

Ronan only shook his head and looked away. Adam knew why he hesitated. Ronan's dreams were as unpredictable and dangerous as the line. In fact, maybe they _were_ the line. They were a conduit to Cabeswater, and in Cabeswater any dream could go wrong. 

But this one already had. 

"I could dream something, then. As long as I'm here," Adam continued, looking down determinedly at the thing. Twigs poked up from its dusty hair, looking like nothing so much as gnarled black devil horns. He said, "I think we can all dream here. Me, Blue, Gansey. Not just you. Sometimes I ask for things and, if I'm here, Cabeswater gives them to me."

Ronan looked supremely unimpressed by this, which was understandable. He was the only one who could access Cabeswater at any time, in any place. He was the only one who could shape it and remove it and give it new life away from the ley line, tethered to his mind. Sustained by Ronan alone. Adam allowed himself to marvel at this briefly, to marvel at the fact that Ronan was a walking ley line himself, bright and potent as the one back in Rome. 

Magic born. For a moment, Adam tried to imagine Ronan leaving this line. A Ronan who was not Ronan, who could depart his fantastic home and come with Adam. But maybe that would be like transplanting Cabeswater. Maybe it was entitled of Adam to even ask.

"The things the rest of you dream up in here don't count," Ronan said now.

"How do you know that?" Adam said.

Ronan looked like he couldn't believe he had to explain this to Adam. "Come on, Parrish. It's what -- flowers? Weird rocks?"

"We needed a cave once and it gave us that," Adam said. 

Ronan snorted. He looked baleful, his long lashes waterlogged. When he spoke again, his voice was rough. 

"Real dreams scrape you."

Maybe this was true. It felt true. Adam wondered then if the great things -- the cave, asking for Gansey's life -- if these had been Ronan at work. 

What a remarkable thing he was. 

"We need fire," Adam said, after a moment. "We need something that will kill a living tree."

"I don't do fire," Ronan said.

Adam thought of pinwheels in the sky and dragons that exploded into starbursts. He nodded his assent, but said, "Do you have another idea, then?"

Ronan closed his eyes. The rain had darkened his brows and lashes, made his face seem smoother and somehow more otherworldly. He was so close that Adam could see the small dip as his brow furrowed, the way his thin lips twisted in concentration. After a moment, Adam blinked and saw the whole instead of the parts -- a Ronan with resolve. The unfaltering Ronan from before, the one who had a goal and a purpose.

It suited him well, Adam thought again, a little wistfully this time. 

Once a few minutes had passed, Ronan's breathing thinned out. He was not quite asleep, because he was wet and crammed on a ledge and he did not need to be asleep to reach Cabeswater now -- they were in Cabeswater already. But he seemed to have settled on the idea he wanted; he seemed calmer. Adam was watching him so intently that he did not even notice what was happening 

There were several loud squelching sounds, then again the crack of branch on branch. Startled, Adam looked down. 

Something large and glossy loomed over the tree-creature. It was mud and dirt, sloughed off fast by the rain and yet constantly reforming itself, stretching tall and thin. It did not have the embellishments of the tree-creature -- it had no eyes, no nails. It made no attempt at clothing or at humanity. As Adam watched, it thrust itself at the tree-creature and smothered it utterly, a torrential flood of earth drowning the creature beneath its weight.

"Did you--" Adam began.

"I'll bury it," Ronan said. But he was picking at his wristbands again, tense, and around them the trees murmured something that did not sound comforting. Adam tried to make sense of it.

"It won't die here," Ronan said, getting there first. He broke off and swore. 

"What?" Adam said. 

"It's taking its power from thing that made it," Ronan said, still translating for the trees. "That thing wants it to live, and so as long as it's close to it, here on the line--" 

"It stays powerful," Adam finished, picking up the thread. The branches near them shivered unhappily in response.

They had to lure the thing off of the line, then sever the connection to its maker. Then it could be buried, or at least rendered harmless. Then it might even be destroyed. Adam could think of a few tools back in Boyd's garage that might do the trick. So he leaned forward and balanced unsteadily on the edge of the rock, watching the thing struggle against Ronan's muddy creation. Ronan's hand pulled him back, but he shrugged it off.

"It wants me," Adam said, sounding calmer than he felt. "You saw it before. It wants me. It'll follow me if I lead it out. You just have to make sure your mud thing follows it and buys me time to break the connection."

Then, before Ronan could stop him, he was skidding down the rock, not caring how it stung his feet. He almost fell at the bottom but righted himself and made a run for a familiar split in the trees, through a line of forest that was dark and dry and cold -- winter again. Rocks and twigs stung his feet, and though he thought he heard a fast crack-crack behind him, he told himself it wasn't the forest-creature because it wasn't like his hearing was good enough to distinguish that kind of thing anyway.

When he came into the temperate, perfect place Aurora usually resided in, the Cabeswater of cave and field, he ran smack into her. Her arms closed around him with surprising softness. The sheer surprise left Adam panicking, batting at her to get away.

"Adam," she said. "Adam Parrish."

He blinked at her. For some reason, he hadn't thought that she knew his name. It wasn't like Ronan had ever formally introduced them. She pressed something into his hands and he saw that it was a pair of Ronan's seven-league boots. He shook his head rapidly.

"I have to lead it away from here," he managed, gasping and out of breath. He didn't think that would work if he stepped into Italy or Idaho or Kuala Lumpur or something.

She had tied the laces together and now she looped them around Adam's neck and pressed his hands to the boots, like she wanted him to keep them anyway. 

Then he did hear the crack, so he ran. The trees around him thinned and lost their personhood, the blue sky darkened to early evening. When he'd run so far his lungs were bursting he found himself running up the familiar, ordinary knoll, through the field. 

In Henrietta, now.


	7. Chapter 7

He needed to stop and scry. If he couldn't scry, he wouldn't learn how to sever the monster's connection to its maker. 

But he was terrified of stopping. Terrified of scrying, too. Again he remembered the black doubt that had taken hold of him and forced him into the cave of the third sleeper. He wondered if the third sleeper had made this thing. If he tried to destroy its monster, would he somehow wake it?

Where the field met the road, he tripped. He hit the ground hard, double-bruised his shoulder. He turned over, expecting to find the monster on him, but it was further off. He could hear its clack-clack, and when he forced himself up he saw it struggling across the field, the mud-creature clinging to it. Ronan ran just behind, urging his monster on. The tree-creature made no attempts to attack Ronan now that he was no longer between it and Adam. Adam was glad

But he had to keep running. He stood unsteadily and staggered across the road. Before he made it across he heard the familiar hum of a well-maintained engine. In moments, he was standing in the headlights of a car.

"Adam?" said a deep voice, twanging with all the Henrietta that Adam tried so desperately to cut out of his own.

Adam squinted. It could not be Boyd's truck, but it was. This could not be Zach Boyd, but it was. Zach's friends were with him -- Tyler in the cab and Brandon in the back. They stared at Adam, dumbfounded. He was wet, barefoot, and mud-stained. 

"Shouldn't you be with your raven boy crowd?" said Zach, looking him over incredulously.

"Shouldn't you be with your grandfather?" Adam shot back. "He wanted to see you today." 

Across the field, Ronan's mud monster had managed to stall the tree-creaturemomentarily, but it was breaking free. Adam wanted it to. The longer the monster stayed stalled, the higher the chances that Ronan would try to fight it into submission and would risk getting himself hurt. So Adam made a split-second decision.

He pulled himself up into the bed next to Brandon Cobb, who edged away, uneasy. Adam ignored him, ignored the mess of bottles and cans and the ever-present smell of beer and gasoline. 

"I need a ride back to town," he said. "Please. Now."

Zach turned around in the driver's seat, flabbergasted. "What?" he said.

"Now," Adam said again. " _Please_." 

Surprisingly, Zach started the car again without a word. Brandon looked sideways at Adam and said, "You leave your manners at that fancy school, Adam?"

"I said please," Adam said tightly. 

But he knew what Brandon meant. Brandon wasn't like the other two -- he was Adam's age; he'd been in class with Adam for years. They'd even been friends before Adam had been forced to sit out soccer season in fifth grade thanks to a broken ankle. He'd thought it was the ankle that had lost him his chance to really get to know anyone on the team. It wasn't, really. It wasn't only the ankle. It was the secret of how he'd hurt it.

Adam's life had always been like that. He didn't know if it was the same way for other people who lived with secrets, but for his part he'd been too busy keeping the secrets to put any extra time into knowing people. The secret of the broken ankle. The secret of the black eye. The secret of the fractured jaw. 

The worst kind of secret was one you kept in error, because anyone with eyes knew just what it was. 

How humiliated he'd felt, anytime that was made clear to him. There he'd been, clean as he could make himself, polite and deferential, good grades, inoffensive manner. Maybe if people saw that polite Adam Parrish, maybe then they would think -- what? That the Parrishes were a good, normal kind of family? That his father was doing the best he could? That his mother had still done right by him? That the dust and the having nothing, that the way people looked at his bruises and looked away -- that all this was alright?

Adam backed into a corner of the bed. This didn't matter. It didn't matter. There were bigger terrors. 

As long as Adam could steal a few moments on the truck, he could use them to scry. He didn't like the thought of scrying in front of these people, his people, but there was nothing he could do about it. 

The real problem was that there was nothing to scry with. Mirrors and candles, Persephone had said. Reflection and light. But Boyd's truck bed was dull and dark, full of discarded, dirt-encrusted beer cans and tools worn with age. 

Next to him, Brandon lifted a new can to his lips. 

It took him a few seconds to realize that Adam was staring at him. Adam realized belatedly that it must be a little unsettling.

"Can I...?" he said, holding out a hand.

Surprisingly, Brandon assented. 

"You look like you need it," he told Adam, passing him the can. 

Adam took out Blue's pocketknife and cut away at the top of the can, ignoring Brandon's exclamation of dismay. It was careful work with the truck bed rattling along the road, but Adam was always careful, so he hardly nicked himself and the cut -- he thought -- might heal soon anyway. Once he had the top off he looked down at the dark liquid inside. It was hard to make out with only moonlight and the taillights, but he could see it glinting dully, could smell how acrid it was.

It was the same brand his father drank. He forced down the sense that he would vomit. Everything inside him was temporarily upended, the pieces of him left in disarray.

"What the hell, Adam?" Brandon demanded.

Adam tuned him out. He had to scry. A part of him felt hollow and worthless doing it like this. Dirt and beer, mud-stains and blood, in the bed of a truck on some country road. Gansey -- how disgusted Gansey would be. How disgusted anyone would be, to reduce magic to this. To Adam's level.

But even as he thought this, he knew it was not quite right. This was not the way to approach scrying; this was not a mood to scry in. Whenever he'd become like this, Persephone had had no pity for him. She'd told him that he was different from other people, better in his own company, an alien. But she'd also told him that he was best when he did not want to be so alien from himself.

This was how you got lost. This was how. He should not be scrying like this. Before he began, he passed Brandon the knife.

"O...kay," Brandon said. He looked behind him at the cab, like Zach and Tyler might help explain what was going on. But Ronnie Milsap blared out from the windows and they looked like they were engaged in their own conversation.

"I'm going to leave," he told Brandon. "You'll know what I mean when you see it. If I'm still out by--" he glanced around at the road, noted how depressingly familiar it was. "If I'm not back by the time we pass Harper Bridge, use that to cut my arm. Doesn't have to be deep, but I need to feel it."

Brandon sputtered. Adam tuned him out again and looked at the dark, foul-smelling contents of the can.

Soon enough he stopped smelling it. Stopped seeing it, too. It was a bitter pool, then a widening lake, black and almost viscous. He let himself spread out along it until he could see Cabeswater as it dropped further and further behind, a whirling mass of energy, old and vast. 

Three things moved in between, making fast for him from the direction of the forest. Ronan -- the brightest thing, always the brightest. His monster, twisting, whirling. And in front: the black energy of the tree-creature. 

It was not doubt with a body, but it was close. The closer Adam came to it the more uncertainty filled him, until again he could not feel his own edges. It took painfully holding onto himself to even remember what he was looking for. The connection. He did not want to look for it; it was easier, more comforting, to follow the world until it coalesced into Ronan. Ronan emitted so much brightness that it snaked out of him, wisps of light twisting off until they dimmed gradually in the distance. One for Chainsaw. One for his brother. One for everything Ronan had created and imbued with life. 

But Adam saw too the black tendril that wove its way out of the tree-monster, arcing back in the direction of the ley line. 

With supreme effort, he followed. And the more he followed the less effort it took. The tendril caught hold of him and pulled, and Adam was no longer simply Adam but every rock and tree and chalk-white cave, the growing things and the living things and the sleeping things along the line. He could never keep this sensation when he was not scrying -- the sense of everything connected and so ancient, trapped in its circle of birth and decay.

Some small part of him had expected to see again the cave of the third sleeper, but by the time the tendril had led him to the Dreaming Tree this part had been wiped clean. Now he could not remember much of himself. It took effort. He was distant now.

In the Tree, in the dark, resided the black doubt with a body. 

Adam had the impression of legs and wings and activity -- a swarm of bees. But then it was no such thing; it was a slender, dark dog. Then a night terror. Then his father. Then the dying Gansey he had seen in the tree before. Then a black doubt that wore Gansey's body, with eyes that were mirrors, like a scrying-glass, like a trap.

It opened its mouth, a patient devourer.

_Adam. Mine_.

Adam wanted to go to it. Had to go to it. It would take will to resist this, and he had none -- not any more than the rocks and the trees did. He knew abruptly that it wanted what he possessed, this strange bargain with the forest, the potent inhumanity that came with being Cabeswater's magician. He knew that once it had him, he would be gone, snuffed as easily as a dream without a maker, and in his place the black doubt would fill out his body, inhabit the place behind his eyes.

There was not enough of Adam Parrish left to care. 

_Come here, Adam. Be mine. Not your own_.

He went.

But on the wall of the cave, he saw the faint, shadowy outline of the trees. 

Cabeswater. It could not penetrate the Dreaming Tree; it could not move within. But it sent in its shadows, its phantom vines. 

This was the forest he had bound himself to. _Himself_. The Magician. Not this vertiginous nothingness, this fading. He had a self. He had a task, and a mind, and a future.

_Come here_.

He reached instead for the shadows of the trees, the shapes of the vines on the walls. They were not substantial, but neither was he at the moment. He was only a fragile mind, hardly any use to Cabeswater at all, but perhaps Cabeswater could be good for him instead.

_It's me_ , he told the forest. _Adam. It's your magician. I'm your magician. Please._

They could ask Cabeswater for small things. Rocks. Flowers. And that cave -- to make that cave they had given it--

Adam couldn't remember now. But he was sure it was something. That was the nature of bargaining. He was unused to other forms of partnership, he thought. But Cabeswater, enormous and frightening, demanding something with everything it gave -- that made some sense to him.

_If you help me, I will stop it_ , he said. No. that was not quite right.

He rearranged this. _With your help, I can stop it._

The shadowy vines became a rough-bark spear, whittled to a deadly point. Adam seized it. Without giving himself time to think, he severed the tendril binding the third sleeper to its monster.

The sleeper screamed. Adam heard the sound everywhere, a reverberation through his remaining self. Then it was surging towards him, mouth open. Its teeth were not teeth but beaks, sharp, mouths within mouths. Its hairy legs stretched for him. It wore Gansey's face, and did not need to stretch -- Adam was its for the taking.

Abruptly, he felt a violent pain at the back of his head, in his neck, in both shoulders. In his body. 

His body. His.

When he opened his eyes, he was lying prone in the flatbed. Tyler Sayre, of three trailers down, was leaning over him, frozen with fright. 

"Fuck," Brandon was saying not far off. "Fuck! Shit, we banged his head."

Tyler, Brandon, and Zach all began to speak at once. Adam sat up gingerly and let them. They did not seem to know that he he didn't have any hearing in one ear; so they first talked into that ear, and then, when he gestured at the other, looked to be rearranging their story so that it made more sense.

Not, Adam thought, for his benefit. For theirs. They wanted it all to make sense, from Adam's appearance on the road, barefoot with his boots around his neck; to Adam's strange trance in the back of the truck.

Brandon had alerted the others when they'd passed Harper's Bridge, and Zach had pulled over no more than five and no less than ten minutes later. Brandon had either not been able to bring himself to stab Adam or else had not been permitted to do so -- the details weren't clear. Tyler might have volunteered, or else simply entertained the idea for a few minutes. Either way, stabbing had been discussed and whoever had been in favor had been hastily outvoted.

"He said I could," Brandon said now, rapidly polishing off what looked like the last of the beer. His throat bulged as he swallowed. It was coated in nervous sweat. "He did say I could," he repeated indistinctly.

"I said he should," Adam put in. 

"Well, he can't stab you, Adam," Zach said. His voice was certain, but his face was unsure and his hands twisted the brim of his baseball cap, as if he could not believe they were having this conversation.

"Listen, it would've been a quick stab. Fuck if Adam needed to get hit instead," said Brandon. 

"I didn't hit him. I shook him," Tyler said. "We shook him. Brandon, you shook him too."

They shot Adam anxious looks as they spoke. They didn't seem to know what to do with Adam now that he was awake and among them. Not one of them, but not quite a raven boy, either. No one here was fool enough to think Adam was a real raven boy. 

But he could see it on their faces when they all thought, as one, that possibly Adam would do something a raven boy might do. Like press charges. He wondered if they knew about his father and the court case. 

Adam let himself down unsteadily from the truck bed.

"Thanks," he said. "Let's just forget about it."

Three pairs of feathery eyebrows climbed up to three hairlines. Adam ignored their protests as he started away. He heard Brandon say, "Shit. See? He definitely doesn't need to get hit anymore. He's had his fucking brains scrambled by now," and Zach call out, "At least put on your shoes, Adam! They're around your neck."

Adam closed his eyes and willed it away. But just in front of him something gave a deliberate crack. The sound of branch hitting branch.

"What the fuck is that?" Zach breathed out, when its edges were visible in the taillights.

Adam backed slowly away. The tree-creature came further into the light, blooming blue eyes fixed on him.

"It's Adam," Brandon suggested. 

"Don't be an asshole," said Zach. "That's not Adam."

"It looks like a tree to me," Tyler said. 

"How is it a fucking tree, Tyler?" Brandon demanded. "It's moving!" 

"No," Tyler insisted, against all reason. 

But then it was lunging at Adam, so it very plainly was moving. Adam struggled against it. He hit solid bark at every turn. The thing was severed from its master but hadn't lost its possessive desire to swallow Adam whole. Its mouth dripped some kind of stinging, foul-smelling sap. Some of it hit Adam's face and he gagged, giving the tree-creature enough time to wind its arms around him. 

He felt pinned again. It felt so much like it had before that now he wondered, wildly, if it really had been Cabeswater back in Burwell Hall that had bound him. The third sleeper wanted to take control of Adam. What if it sometimes wanted to take control of Cabeswater too? Would the forest know the difference? Could it even protect itself?

Above him, the tree-monster's rough jaw stretched, yawned wide. Adam tried to get away but couldn't. It was holding him solidly against the road. 

Something hard smacked it in the neck. Splinters of wood flew everywhere. Something else hacked at its vine-arms with Blue's knife. Something else hauled Adam up. 

"Zach has a bat," Tyler Sayre said, focusing on this as though he thought it might save their lives. "I left my fucking gun at home -- _fuck_ , man -- but Zach has a bat. He has a bat."

The thing lunged for Adam again. Tyler jumped out of the way, but it made no difference. The tree-creature did not get far because Zach did, in fact, have a bat.

"What is it?" Brandon demanded of Adam, as Zach distracted the thing with nothing more than a lot of unfettered swinging. Adam thought it was less focused, less capable of thought, now that the connection was cut. "Can we kill it?"

Adam said, "Now we can."

"Now?" Tyler said. Since -- aside from the bat -- they were down to Blue's pocketknife and a lighter, he and Adam and Brandon hunted fruitlessly in the back of the truck for something more to attack the tree-creature with. Adam knew what to look for, so he found the tire iron, jack, and jumper cables first. 

"Why does it look like you?" Brandon demanded.

Adam didn't answer. He didn't want to share the details with them. Instead he said, "We should knock it out if we can. Tie it up. Let's tie it up either way."

He wasn't sure if they would respond to his instructions. They knew him, so he was nothing to them. But evidently they saw the sense in this, because Brandon grabbed the tire iron and Tyler settled for the heavy jack. As they each approached the monster, Adam hoisted the cables onto his better shoulder and crossed to meet Zach. While the others distracted the monster, he explained the plan.

"Okay," Zach said hastily. "Okay. Okay. Is it after you?"

Adam felt his heart sink somewhere below his knees. He'd been hoping no one would ask that. If they found out that the creature was only here for Adam, there would be no reason for them not to leave Adam to his fate. He didn't want that to happen. Now that they were helping him, he wanted them here.

If Ronan were present, it would have been another story. But he had fallen behind. And Adam knew he would have to destroy the creature before he could touch the raw terror in him at the thought that it might have hurt Ronan.

"Is it after you?" Zach said again.

For some reason, it felt dishonest to lie about this point. Gansey would not have lied about this. Whatever they were to Adam, wherever they were from, Zach and the others were facing a genuine ley line monster without blinking an eye. So Adam nodded tightly. 

"Okay," Zach said. "Well, get those cables ready."

Then he squared himself and ran at the monster, looking faintly ridiculous and yet succeeding in keeping it away. They took turns hitting it as Adam unwound the cables, but it seemed to make no difference. Its wood shattered and revealed spongy moss beneath. Its leaves flaked off and inside it was tough sapwood and heartwood. 

"This isn't working," Adam called out. "We have to just try and tie its arms with the cables, I thi--"

He stopped. Something else was coming towards them, down the road, darkening the already-dark sky. It was a black wave, almost indistinguishable from the black around it except that even through the dim red light afforded by the tail-lights, Adam could tell it was large and fast becoming larger. 

"Step back!" he shouted, catching Zach's arm. "Come on! Step back!" He managed to drag all three of them back to the truck before the wave hit, a fall of mud and loam that blocked the monster from view momentarily.

Ronan was riding it. Like Adam, he had a pair of boots looped around his neck. He must have found his mother before leaving Cabeswater, or maybe he had doubled back for the boots, or doubled back to make his monster stronger, dream it ever-greater than before. It was vast now -- just shifting, moving dirt, blocking the tree-creature at every turn and then reforming itself to do it again. Ronan slid off it lightly, face arrogant, as though he'd fully expected this. But when he came up to the truck Adam noticed that he now had an angry scratch along the side of his jaw.

"Did you do it?" he asked Adam tightly. Sever the connection, he meant. Adam nodded. Ronan relaxed just a fraction, but only a fraction. The look he turned on Zach, Tyler, and Brandon was pernicious.

Adam immediately felt exhausted. He did not want to navigate this -- Ronan and these boys. He supposed that in their own way they could tell Ronan too much about him, too much about where he was really from, what he was really like, what he was trying to escape. Dust and dirt. Henrietta-born. But Ronan knew some of that already, and anyway, Ronan -- with his attractive arms, thick lashes, and provoking wildness -- could probably convey some things about Adam that _they_ didn't know.

So he didn't focus on any of them. Just on the battling monsters, which was smarter anyway. After a minute, he realized that it was no use, Ronan's monster. The tree-creature was fast enough to dodge it when it really needed to. This was effectively a stalemate.

He was not the only one to realize it. Ronan said, "Give me those cables," at the same time Zach said, "Adam, we've gotta get in and tie it down."

Then they stared at each other aggressively, so Adam unwound the cables and handed Tyler and Brandon each an end. 

"I'd do it, but it'll be harder for me than it would be for you. It's after me," he explained. 

Neither Brandon nor Tyler looked particularly surprised by this at this point, which was its own kind of depressing. They each approached the fight from a different direction, sizing up both monsters, looking for an in.

"That dirt thing won't hurt them, will it?" Zach asked Adam.

"It's not mine," Adam said.

Zach snorted and said, "Yeah. Sure." 

Adam shot Ronan a look, expecting him to be offended, but instead Ronan looked strangely pleased.

"Tell him it's not mine," Adam told him.

"I'm not going to tell him that," Ronan said. 

"Shit, Adam," Zach said, sounding badly impressed. "What are they teaching you at that school?"

"It's not _mine_ ," Adam said.

Regardless, the mud monster didn't hurt Tyler and Brandon. It danced around the spaces they left and prodded at the tree-creature, making sure its vine-encrusted arms never got near either of them. They had the jumper cables looped around the tree-creature in only a few minutes, and then Zach and Ronan joined in to help tighten and secure. When this was done, they all backed away and looked at Adam expectantly. Even Ronan, who should have known better.

"Get that thing to finish it off," Zach instructed.

"It's not mi--" Adam said again, but by then the mud monster had reared to towering height. It hit the tree-creature in one great wave, so powerful that it left the road beneath the creature spiderwebbed with cracks. It forced the creature off to one side, then buried it with one relentless torrent in the ground next to the road, shoving it deep in the earth, leaving nothing more than a mound of dirt and a cloud of dust.

They turned away, coughing. When the dust settled, they could still see the fractures in the road. Adam would bet that these continued all the way back to the bend before Cabeswater.

"Well, this is gonna cost a lot of money to fix," Zach muttered, crouching down and pressing a finger into one worn asphalt groove.

He got three mutters of tired agreement, and nothing from Ronan because Ronan could hardly be expected to think about anything like that. Zach didn't seem to hold it against him. He stood and said, "Do you two want a ride back, then? To town? Or Aglionby or something?"

Ronan brushed past him and sat down by the edge of the road, pulled his boots down, unknotted the laces. 

"Tell him we're walking, Parrish," he said.

Brandon made a rude gesture at him with the tire iron, but Zach looked unruffled. Probably because they were fifteen miles out from any inhabited location and it was well into night, so walking seemed out of the question.

Adam said, "Sorry. Thanks for your help, though. Seriously." 

He meant it. He didn't know why they had helped, but it had been better than doing this alone. 

As Zach and his friends stared, shocked, he crossed to the side of the road and sat, echoed Ronan in pulling on his boots. He stared at Ronan out of the corner of his eye as he did this. Ronan's lip curled, pleased. Zach made to approach them and talk them out of this, but Ronan waved him away, heedless and arrogant. Zach looked at Adam pleadingly instead.

"It's okay," Adam said, knotting his second boot. "Seriously. And again: thanks."

He stood and waited for Ronan to finish, then pulled Ronan to his feet.

"Later," Ronan said to the trailer boys carelessly, winding his arms around Adam. Then, "Let's go home."


	8. Chapter 8

Again the tugging, again the rush of noise. As before, the trip took only an instant, which was still enough time for Adam to wonder whether Ronan meant the Barns or St. Agnes. But St. Agnes was not much of a home. Ronan must have meant the Barns.

But they fell onto Ronan's bed in Monmouth Manufacturing. Chainsaw flapped anxiously around them as soon as they appeared. Ronan tugged off his boots and cursed. For the first few minutes all his attention was on her -- he had not, it seemed, meant to leave her unattended all day.

"I should have brought you to detention," he told her very seriously. "You would have loved it."

She kerah-ed her forgiveness. She was very large these days, but Ronan cradled her in his hands and murmured private things into her feathers. Adam felt very trusted to be allowed to see this. He didn't want to overstay his welcome. He pulled off his own boots, then said, "Listen. I should head out--"

"Your bike's at the Barns and you look like shit," said Ronan. He was covered in mud and blood and had shredded his socks to bits. He added, "You can take a shower and change your clothes, Parrish. I'm not going to throw you out."

So Adam made his way to the bathroom/kitchen/laundry room, letting the sound of Ronan's coos and Chainsaw's kerahs drop behind him. This was not the first time he'd showered at Monmouth, but it was the first time he'd done it with Ronan here and not Gansey. It felt different. Ridiculously illicit. The emphasis was on ridiculous, though, not on illicit. He knew this cramped room inside-out, and it wasn't a place to feel illicit in. He could reach the fridge from the shower and the washing machine from the toilet.

Now he palmed some mint-scented body wash and resigned himself to smelling like Gansey for the night. Everything Gansey owned carried his stamp -- the upscale monogrammed towels; the minty boutique toothpaste that promised whitening treatment Gansey sorely didn't need. It didn't bother Adam as much now, how Gansey's sheer Gansey-ness could take over a space. Here and there were glimmers of Ronan regardless: one of the towel rods replaced by a black bar that emitted faint music when touched, one of the shower curtain hooks swapped out for a fish hook carved from deep blue stone. A suitcase was shoved under the sink. It had heavy green vines growing out of it.

He wondered if Ronan was trying to bring the Barns to Monmouth somehow. He didn't need to; he had access to the Barns now whenever he wanted. But it was like Ronan to leave something of himself in places, carelessly shove away his strange magic, discard the pieces of a dream he might never miss. Hand cream on Adam's car seat. A wad of iridescent blankets on the floor of St. Agnes in the morning. A stack of school supplies left on Adam's desk chair.

Would Adam have some unexpected piece of Ronan to take with him, when he left for college?

Adam paused in rinsing his hair. What was a selfish thought. He was leaving because he chose to, and Ronan owed him nothing. No time. No dreams. No seven-league boots. When had he grown so accustomed to Ronan giving him anything? How had he grown so accustomed to it? Adam Parrish, Army of One, was not supposed to become used to this kind of thing. 

_As if there was ever any chance of you succeeding at that_ , Adam thought, leaning against the tile. _You were a proud, proud thing to think you could have._

Cabeswater had shown him that. And Gansey, coming to the courtroom, and Blue and Noah in the cave. 

And Ronan. 

Ronan -- warm, alive, bright, and horrible. Savage and handsome, easy with violence, confrontational, ever-angry. Forever triggering the bitter part of Adam that wanted to resist and impress and be more than himself. Ronan, who liked that part of Adam. 

Surely he liked it?

Ronan had taken him to Italy. He had fought one monster for Adam, and made another. He had stayed on the ley line for Adam, and left it when Adam had needed to leave. He had confronted Cabeswater for Adam. He had even shown Adam his mother's hidden palace -- a place Niall Lynch had made for her, a part of the Barns so fitted for Aurora that was unrecognizable as a part of the Barns.

_I could fill every fucking corner of that town with whatever you want, until you couldn't even recognize it anymore._

In Rome, all this had seemed believable. But in Rome anything had seemed believable. Ronan Lynch could have so much more than Adam. Adam blinked through the steam, let the water wash over him, and tried to keep it all in his mind. 

He didn't know if he could. He was too Henrietta for this. He had been born in a trailer. Everyone around here knew it. And for a second, Adam thought about tracking someone down -- Zach or Brandon or Tyler or something -- and having them explain it to Ronan. As if Ronan, and everyone, couldn't already see Adam's life written all over Adam.

But Ronan didn't care. He didn't.

It made Adam's breath stop short, like a minor stroke. He was not used to this; he was not made for it. He could not be someone Ronan gave to like this. It wasn't as though he could give anything back. He leaned against the wall and breathed out hard. Closed his eyes. When he opened them again, everything was Ronan.

The sharp, old-fashioned shaving razor next to him, made entirely of cut green glass. The washcloth that hummed in his hands. The small floatable raven, Chainsaw in rubber, staring at him from the soap dish. 

It was all Ronan. Young, dumb, unpredictable, and marvelous. Adam steadied himself on the wall now and exhaled hard. He felt so present he could hardly stand it -- present, and alive, and awake in a way he rarely was. He thought of Ronan, Ronan's thick lashes, the curl of his lip. His tattoo. Adam tried to picture what it would look like in its entirety: the whole ferocious landscape of Ronan's back. He had never seen it fully. What would it look like here, under the fall of water? Ronan showered here. Ronan did laundry here, and ate here too.

Ronan must jack off here, even. Was he wild about it? Free? Or was he like Adam -- did he hold himself at arms' length, was this difficult for him? Would he gasp, would his breath come in too quickly, would his skin go red in places Adam could only guess at?

Adam's breath hitched. He echoed the Ronan in his mind, hard and aching. He was so used to want, but this kind of want was different. He was usually cursory about this -- it wasn't that he thought it was dirty or that he was wrong to like both men and women, and really anything that differentiated Adam from Robert Parrish's kind of son was its own sort of comfort. He was cursory because he didn't have time, because it felt so unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, because he wasn't used to wanting the way other people seemed to want. He wanted so much so regularly that this kind of thing made no difference. 

But this was different.

He thought of Ronan before him, with him. Lashes fanned out, cursing ferociously, limbs spread out and wild, breath coming out in huffs, touchable, unpredictable, _his_ \-- Ronan in all his dimensions rendered _Adam's_ by desire. Adam buried one hand in his mouth to keep from screaming out, could hardly think for the intensity. Why had he never allowed himself to want this before?

"Oh my god, I can't believe you're doing this in our bathroom," Noah whispered.

Adam yelled, knocked back so quickly that he collided against the wall with a thunk. 

Noah sat on the edge of the tub and stared at him. All of him. Even the parts now going soft pretty fast.

"Parrish?" Ronan said from outside the door.

It took Adam a minute to collect himself well enough to make any kind of sound. It took a minute because Noah was still there. Adam snapped the washcloth at him and Noah said, "I'm not a dog!" indignantly.

Ronan seemed not to hear that. 

"Parrish," he said again. "If you use up all the hot water, I'm going to get Chainsaw to moult all over your shitty apartment, I swear to god."

The rebuttal came too late: _She moulted last month. how many times a year does she moult?_ Moulting was not important at this time. Noah was right there.

"Go away!" Adam hissed.

"I wish I could," Noah said stiffly. "Everybody thinks they can't leave, but I really can't leave."

Adam ignored this. "You can leave this room!"

"It's my bathroom."

"You're not using it!"

"It's not my fault I can't use the bathroom anymore."

"What do you want?"

For a moment Adam had a horrible vision -- Noah as some kind of all-knowing matchmaker. Noah was all-knowing, in his own way, but it did him no good. He was all-knowing the way Cabeswater was powerful. It was one extraordinary talent he had that hardly helped him, since otherwise he was mostly eerily inhuman and susceptible to influence. Now he took the washcloth and passed it over his open mouth, letting it hum and vibrate against him, humming right back. It was dumb and young, something Ronan might have done, but Ronan had real form to him. Ronan's chest rose and fell. Ronan didn't have a smudge on his cheek that made you look away very quickly. 

It was awful, in a way, to think of Noah offering his opinions on what Adam had just been thinking about. Adam did not want love advice from something so obviously ley-made at this point. It would be like getting love advice from Cabeswater. Surely some things did not require a bargain with inhuman magic. Surely Adam wasn't _that_ bad at figuring it out on his own.

Noah snorted. 

"You are, but like I care," he said. 

"So what do you want?" Adam demanded.

Noah said, "It doesn't even have to be your hands. An agent of an agent gets the job done. I bet _it_ knows that, too."

Adam stared at him.

Noah stared back. He didn't explain what he meant; he hardly even seemed to realize he'd said it. After a moment he brought the washcloth to his mouth again and did the humming thing. It had no real harmony or coherence to it; he distorted the sound of the thing, made it more brittle. His feet dangled into the tub, twisted strangely against the porcelain, somehow not wet at all.

Adam rinsed and toweled off quicker than he ever had in his life. He knew somehow that if he tried to tell Noah to go Noah wouldn't hear him, and anyway his edges were looking blurry so he might leave soon anyway. Adam avoided looking at him. He grabbed some clean clothing from the dryer -- chinos that hit his ankles and a button-down too broad for him; the dryer seemed to have only Gansey's things -- and balled his old clothes in a plastic bag he found behind the fridge.

Ronan was sitting in the main room when he came out. He was still curled over Chainsaw, but he looked like he'd tried to clean himself up. His jaw was no longer bleeding and his arms had been wiped clean. Chainsaw lifted her face to Adam before he did, jutting her head out. 

Ronan said, "You look like you play golf, Parrish," and tossed a bundle of clothing at him. 

Adam wanted to warn him about Noah, but he was already heading to the bathroom himself. He slammed the door shut behind him. Adam listened to see if he would try and talk to Noah, but heard nothing. Noah must have gone. Shaken, Adam sat down and rifled through the bundle. Everything was in his size - exact. He wondered how much Ronan had to look at him to notice that, and then he automatically corrected himself for assuming that Ronan cared, and then he blinked and shook his head. Ronan did. That was the point. 

That was what he'd been thinking of, before Noah had interrupted him. 

Now it seemed like a stupid thing to think of, to think that it mattered. An agent of an agent. What did that mean? An agent of an agent. Adam thought of Cabeswater controlled, at the mercy of the third sleeper. His hands shook as he unbuttoned Gansey's shirt and chinos.

But Chainsaw found a way to divert his attention from Noah's words. Once Adam had undressed, she flew over and began to peck at Gansey's clothes as though she were conquering a foe. Adam rescued them before she could destroy them utterly. He folded them as best he could and left them on Gansey's bed. Chainsaw waited until he was dressed again, then began pecking at his feet. She was a very poorly-raised bird, because she'd been raised by Ronan. Adam side-stepped several times to avoid her, not wanting to hurt her, before he realized that she was herding him in the direction of Ronan's room. 

Oh no.

He stopped moving. She pecked his right foot expectantly and cocked her head at him. He said, "No, girl," the way he might have to the mutts that lived around the edges of the trailer park. He tried to shoo her away with his toes. 

Adam was decent with animals because they wanted to survive, the same as anyone else, and he could respect that. But the look Chainsaw turned on him now was not animal at all. It was very human, so Ronan it was eerie. She was different from the ravens that had attacked Burwell Hall. Those had been the sleeper's -- he was sure of it now. They had worn a cloud of black doubt. She didn't wear that; she wore something like Ronan at his most intractable. 

"No," Adam told her firmly. "We're not doing this." This was mostly how he handled Ronan at his most intractable. Or ideally how he would -- he couldn't always manage it. 

"Kerah," Chainsaw said dismissively. She cocked her head at the bathroom. 

"Yeah, he's in there," Adam said, and tried to wave her away. 

She dodged his hands and pecked once between his feet, imperious, as though to say:

Not him. You.

Then she looked back at the bathroom, and then she just looked the way Noah had initially -- as though she thought Adam should be ashamed of himself. Adam went red. She was a bird. She didn't know. And he wasn't ashamed, anyway. Everybody did it. This was ridiculous. She was a bird. 

"Everybody does it. I only did it here this once!" he hissed.

Kerah.

"You don't understand--"

Kerah. Kerah.

"I never thought I could have him before," he insisted, like this made sense. It didn't. Half his mind was still fixed on Ronan somehow, the other half on the problem of Cabeswater and the third sleeper, and -- torn as it was between both of these things -- his capacity for logic was sputtering, falling behind. 

Chainsaw looked very unimpressed with him. She began attacking his foot again. When Adam protested, she shot him another look. 

You want this, you liar.

He did. But he was not going to let a wayward piece of Ronan's brain get him there. He would get there on his own, if at all. He scooped her up the way he'd seen Ronan do it. Ronan refused to cage her, but Gansey had purchased several roomy, elegant contraptions out of some inner sense that this was what you did for your birds. He had been roundly eviscerated for it -- _Southern Living prisons for parakeets? Fuck off, Gansey_ \-- but Adam found the cages lying abandoned on a massive walnut desk in the corner. He dumped Chainsaw inside for the time being. She stared at him, still unimpressed. 

You're not fooling anyone.

"Fine. But I do it my way, in my time," Adam told her. He hadn't spoken his feelings to an animal since he'd been a kid trying to befriend strays. Telling his problems to strays had helped him about as much as telling people had, so he'd outgrown it. But this day seemed to have dug up some long-buried Adam Parrish. The Adam Parrish who had wanted someone, anyone, who hadn't yet learned to rely on only himself. 

He sat at the desk and folded his face into his arms. Chainsaw kerah-ed loudly again, the sound harsh and discordant in the large room. This was somehow comforting, comforting the way the murder squash song was comforting. There was something naturally cacophonous to her. An innate inability to fully conform to her surroundings. She seemed like she couldn't really judge him, and if she did it hardly mattered, because she was even worse at this existing thing than he was -- she was gloriously, loudly, wonderfully bad at it, like her maker.

"It has to be me," he explained to her softly. He was firm on that point. He needed to be the one to choose Ronan. He couldn't leave it up to Ronan. Firstly because Ronan plainly liked him, but had not acted on it beyond his parade of improbable gifts. And secondly because Ronan would do it wrong, would decide that it was all or nothing, would offer him a palace in the trees or else an all-expenses-paid trip out of Ronan's life.

So it had to be Adam, to deal with that problem.

What about the other one?

An agent of an agent. It didn't have to be _his_ hands. And the third sleeper knew these points, just as Adam did now. 

What bothered Adam most was the way this half-connected. The way this felt like a jagged prophecy, pieces plucked from different points in time and not arranged quite right. An agent of an agent. Like if the sleeper could not get him, then it could get at Cabeswater? And then Cabeswater could get at him. And then--

Adam thought of Gansey dying inside the Dreaming Tree. 

The pieces began to fit together.

It did not have to be Adam. It did not have to be Adam, but it certainly could be if the third sleeper took Cabeswater again. Adam buried his head in his hands and exhaled hard. 

"Kerah," Chainsaw said impassively.

"This one I need help with," Adam admitted. He did need help. He did. He felt as though all potential futures were one future. Gansey would die. He would die and walk the corpse road; this was assured. And it could happen any number of ways. It was a fork in the road that didn't matter, because soon enough both paths would reconnect, lead him to the same conclusion. The third sleeper was on the line, and it wanted Cabeswater or Adam or both, and it wanted the power of the line, and when it got it, Gansey would die. 

Would it be fixing the line that did it? Fixing the line would make the line brighter and more powerful. It would let what was _on_ the line travel _off_ of it. That didn't just mean Aurora. That meant everything. Skeletal deer, dead Welsh kings. Monsters.

"Fixing the line won't be any good if we don't get rid of what's on it," he told Chainsaw.

Kerah.

"Why does it even want him dead?" he said.

Kerah.

It seemed to be connected to the ravens, somehow. To the raven king. Adam felt his heart sink further. That made it truly inevitable. They could never turn Gansey away from his quest to find his king; without the need to find Glendower, he wouldn't be Gansey.

"I need help," he told Chainsaw again. 

She did not kerah this time, but behind him Ronan said, "Help with what?"

Adam turned in his chair to see him exiting the bathroom in a fury of steam and far too many expensive towels. Ronan was mostly covered and yet there was more of him than Adam had ever seen before, arms and pale legs and tattoo. Adam saw nothing else for that one brief moment, but then then Ronan was in his room and slamming the door behind him. Adam felt briefly cheated. 

He didn't know why he felt cheated. It wasn't as if he had the right to see anything. He looked anxiously at Chainsaw as though she might correct him, but she didn't; she only kerah-ed again.

"Why are you talking to my bird?" Ronan asked, coming out of his room a second later. He did not say it like he felt that talking to birds was unusual, only like he felt that it was unusual for people to run around thinking they could do it with his bird in particular, like perhaps he couldn't really understand why they didn't just dream their own. 

He lifted Chainsaw out of the cage and sat cross-legged on the floor with her in his lap, picking his fingers through her feathers. She seemed to enjoy this.

"Help with what?" Ronan said again.

He sounded impatient, but Adam took his time picking the right words. He had often wondered whether he should tell Ronan what he knew. About the corpse road and the dreaming tree, Gansey and Blue. _Wondered_ was perhaps not the right word, though. _Agonized_ fit better, or perhaps even _fantasized_. Terrible fantasies could still be fantasies.

"I need your help with something because I think that the third sleeper made that thing," he told Ronan simply. "The third sleeper wants me. It wants Cabeswater's hands. And I know what it wants them for, because I saw it in the Dreaming Tree. 

"I think it's going to kill Gansey."

Ronan stiffened. When he spoke, his voice was ugly and scornful.

"How the fuck do you know what a vision from the Dreaming Tree means?" 

"I don't," Adam said. "I thought it was me who did it at first, in the vision. He was dead, and--"

"Just because you saw it doesn't mean he's going to die," Ronan said. 

"It's going to happen," Adam said. "Everything we saw today was the third sleeper. The ravens, the way Cabeswater tied me down. It's all meant to tell us something. I think--

But now Ronan was looking cold and savage, his anger bare on his face.

"I think you're not about predictions, Parrish, " he said. "Stick to what you can do. You left the trailer park and met some magic trees. It doesn't make you a prophet."

"I saw it take his form when it was connected to that monster," Adam said. "It's like it's obsessed with him--"

"What, like the white trash he picked up on the side of the road a few years ago?"

"Blue saw him walking the corpse road!" 

He knew it was a betrayal as soon as he said it. Blue doubtlessly didn't want him to tell. And telling made Ronan look angrier, harder than before. Ronan in all his classic, vicious glory -- a Ronan being forced to face something he didn't want to face.

"So maybe she's trash like you. Maybe she sees whatever she needs to to feel closer to somebody like him," Ronan said ruthlessly. "And maybe you will, too. Just because two redneck nobodies think he's in danger doesn't mean he i--"

" _Don't fucking call us that_ ," Adam said.

He didn't realize how vicious and ugly he felt now until he said it. He didn't realize that he had knocked the cages off of the desk, either. He felt overwhelmed, muddy and angry and wrong, and he couldn't turn it off. It wasn't that he cared what Ronan called him. Ronan had called him worse, called Blue worse, and she did not even deserve it. This was what Ronan did, this exhausting anger. Ronan reacted like this even when he didn't have to. Ronan chose this.

Ronan had always seemed impossible to him, but he was in his own category of impossible -- the one impossible thing Adam had always wanted but never bothered to try for. And Adam had tried for impossible things all his life: Adam had tried for Aglionby and that had seemed impossible. And tried to wake the line. And pressed charges, and walked into that courtroom. He'd always been working towards a life where he did not get this hit, or that smack -- and the fact that he seemed to have it now still seemed impossible. College seemed impossible, but he wanted it anyway. He would try for it anyway.

He had not thought to try for Ronan, and now he remembered why. Ronan chose his anger.

But Adam didn't have to.

He stood up, tried not to listen to the way his voice came out Henrietta-thick, tried to stay present. 

"I'm going home," he told Ronan. He crossed the room and reached for the seven-league boots again. He would bring them back in the morning.

"How do these work?" he asked. He didn't bother to look back at Ronan as he said it. "Do I--do I just think of where I want to go, or--"

"It's not that easy," Ronan said. That was it. The silence stretched. He said nothing else.

Adam's anger flared up again. He fought to shove it down. He did not want to beg, but he would if that was what Ronan wanted. He would beg if it meant that he didn't -- didn't _erupt_ the way he had with Blue.

"Just tell me," he said. He made sure it was very even and quiet. 

"They just work," Ronan said. "That's all there is to tell. They worked for my dad. They worked for me. We don't know if they'll work for you the same way."

This was a bitter disappointment after being shown their wonders. Adam kicked them away and tried not to be spiteful about it. He didn't feel like he succeeded. He felt un-aligned again, useless. He stood.

"Then I'm walking," he told Ronan curtly.

He didn't care that his feet were bare. He had to get out. He felt sick of himself, and he knew it could carry over and become something horrible if he let it. But he wouldn't let it. He lurched towards the door, ungainly as the tree-creature had been, something in him just as black and unmanageable.

"Adam," Ronan said. 

It rang around in Adam's brain and made no impression. Adam was trying and failing to stay present. Already a part of him felt as hollow as he had that morning in Burwell Hall. He heard a distant, unhappy bird screech behind him and then Ronan was crossing in front of him, hunching himself into the doorway, long legs and arms blocking Adam's path. 

"Move," Adam snarled. He sounded furious. He was. He was losing this. Maybe he'd never tried for Ronan because he'd always known it would be like this, Ronan's constant rage matching Adam's more depraved, insidious version of the same emotion. 

Ronan looked at him, still savage. Adam chose to look away. He didn't want this right now. He didn't want things to be like this -- for an instant it had seemed as though he and Ronan could _happen_ , and he knew that some of his fury came not from Ronan but from the realization of what a stupid idea that was. 

"Move," he said again, uglier and harsher this time. "I'm not going to sit around here wasting my time with you."

"Adam," was all Ronan said.

He moved instead, because Ronan was not moving. He wouldn't wait for the next vicious swipe from Ronan. It would only make Adam himself more vicious. He made to shove past Ronan. Ronan grabbed his hand. 

It was a sudden, awkward action. Adam stilled. Then his anger roared in both ears even louder than before.

"What are you--"

"Adam," Ronan said again, like he couldn't say anything else. Adam looked at him now. He could not make out the expression on Ronan's face. Ronan's anger was marred by something else, something young. He looked like he was as unsure about what he would do next as Adam was.

Then, still awkward about it, he brought Adam's hand to his mouth.

"Don't go," he told Adam's palm, voice low. Even he seemed confused by this. He did not seem anything like Ronan Lynch.

"Adam. Don't fucking go."

Then he kissed Adam's palm. He did it furtively, like he was stealing something.

"Don't go," he said again. He sounded hollow. It seemed very difficult for him to get the next words out. "You do this shit sometimes. 'Dream it for Matthew.' 'Let's do it for your mother.' I thought it was more of that shit, okay? I thought it would be like that but with Gansey. I didn't want to hear--"

"I wouldn't do that with Gansey," Adam said. His own voice came out choked. How horrible to have his words, his wrongdoing thrown back in his face. "I wouldn't. I won't do it with your mom or Matthew, either, if you don't want--"

Ronan shook his head violently, wild about it. He still held tightly to Adam's hand.

"I don't care about that," he said. "Just don't go. I don't want you to go." 

He was hunched over himself now, hardly even bothering to block the doorway. His thick lashes were even thicker with something angry and wet, his finely-curved lip was uncertain and young. Abruptly, Adam hated himself for reducing Ronan Lynch to this. This was not Ronan. This could not be happening.

"Don't go," Ronan told his palm again.

"I'm sorry," Adam said desperately. "I can't sleep here anyway. I'm sorry. Let's just--"

"Don't be fucking sorry," Ronan enunciated clearly, into his hand. "Just. Don't. Go."

Adam made a split-second decision. He curved his hand into Ronan's cheek instead of around Ronan's mouth. It made sense, somehow -- it made sense like aligning himself did. Instinct. Movement. He thought Ronan would understand that better than all this arguing, maybe.

Ronan closed his eyes. Now the curve of his mouth looked victorious.

"I'll stay," Adam said, more to himself than Ronan.

He stayed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway, this is the chapter with the awkward teen boy sex.

It was harder to come back from a fight than it was to start one. Adam had very little practice with this. Ronan probably had none.

Ronan's answer was to head to his room, sit on the edge of his bed, and bend down low. He tucked his head into his chest and wound his arms around his head. Adam stared at him.

"What are y--"

"Just tell me why you think he'll die again," Ronan said. 

"That's not going to get us anywhere," Adam said. Ronan didn't really want to hear that Gansey would die. And right now Adam was talking to the top of Ronan's head.

"Just say it again. Start at the top," Ronan said.

"You're not even looking at me."

Ronan made a sound that was impossibly sour. Chainsaw, who'd flown in after them and was now nesting in a pile of Ronan's laundry, echoed it with a shrill kerah. 

"Right," Adam said. "That tells me a lot. Thank you."

Ronan said, very, very low, "This is the listening position."

Adam stared at him. 

"Sorry?"

Ronan's next words were not really words, just growls shaped into some semblance of intelligibility.

"When I was a kid, my dad wasn't home a lot. It was us and mom. She told us when to go to bed, when to eat. But if we didn't want to do it, we wouldn't. She wouldn't do anything to us. She's not strict."

"I've noticed," Adam said impatiently. He didn't know how this connected to Gansey. Ronan became plainly annoyed by Adam's inability to figure it out and extended his middle fingers without taking his head out of his hands.

"My dad would come home and we'd be just fucking wild," said Ronan, who was just fucking wild on his better days. 

"He told her that if we didn't listen, she had to say, 'Listening position.' And then we had to do this, and we had to stay like this until we were ready to listen to her."

Adam waited for the end of the story, but it didn't come. That seemed to have been it. 

"And you just did what he said?" 

"Of course we did," Ronan said, rearing up. "He told us to!"

It was a much, much milder punishment than any Adam had ever received and yet it felt wrong to think that Ronan would submit to it. Adam had refused to submit to harsher things. And Ronan never submitted to anything. 

But now Ronan was putting his head back in his hands again, hunching over and ducking low. Listening. Apparently. Adam could not believe that this was what it took to make Ronan Lynch listen. He had a sudden urge to reach out a hand and trace the curve of Ronan's ear, the back of Ronan's neck. This was too vulnerable a position for Ronan. 

He beat back the urge, launched into his theory instead. This time he laid it out as objectively as possible. His vision in the Dreaming Tree, so many months ago. The way the Third Sleeper had pulled him into its cavern. Learning that Gansey was to walk the corpse road. Realizing that the sleeper could control Cabeswater, use it, infect it, and in so doing use him. Seeing the sleeper again after it made its monster -- seeing the way it tried to wear Gansey's face, the way it wanted Adam's hands and eyes. 

Now that he was calmer, he believed in his theory no less, but he could see some of the holes. These were just facts. He didn't know the whys or hows behind them yet.

"Maybe it isn't guaranteed," he admitted. "It's all disconnected. I'm supposed to make the connections, but I'm not seeing them. I get that. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's not certain."

Ronan said, voice muffled, "Walking the corpse road is pretty fucking certain."

Adam thought so, too. He remembered now a day with Persephone and her tarot cards. Three cards in sequence, and in the final one a burning tower, a sense of despair. He hadn't been able to undo that despair, hadn't been able to unmake what would surely happen. He'd only been able to draw a fourth card -- the Magician.

He'd felt so convinced when he'd done that. Now he only felt like a failure.

"I don't blame you if you don't want to believe it," he told Ronan. "You were right. It doesn't add up yet. I need to see it all better. I need to get better at understanding where we go from the corpse road. We know he's going to walk it. But I need to figure out how, and why."

"You will," Ronan said. He did not sound pleased, but he did sound completely certain. He always did, when he spoke of Adam like this. Absolute conviction.

Again, Adam felt an overwhelming desire to touch him, to trace the place where his tattoo peeked out of his shirt and met the nape of his neck. There was silence for a moment.

"How did your mom get you to leave the listening position?" he asked, finally.

"I left it when I was good and fucking ready," Ronan snapped. 

But he sat up anyway. His black brows were drawn together, his face tight. He said, "Remember that recording Gansey made? Some voice talking to him, him saying his name, but he didn't remember having the conversation?"

Adam tried to search his memory but came up empty. Ronan didn't give him enough time to dig deep anyway. He bit at one nail and snapped the black band just beneath it at the same time, then stopped abruptly and said, "It was Blue. It was her voice. Remember -- she told us herself, later on. We hadn't met her yet but she was asking him -- asking if something was all. And he said, 'That's all there is.'"

Adam tried not to let his confusion show on his face.

"It was Blue," Ronan said again. "I recognized her voice when I met her. But that conversation hasn't happened yet. It's the ley line, right? Corpse road. Same shit. Time there gets messed up."

He was offering up another piece to the puzzle.

"He says, 'Gansey,'" Ronan continued. "She says, 'Is that all there is?' He says, 'That's all there is.' In what universe does the maggot hear 'Gansey' and say, 'Is that it?' She'd never say that."

It was still uncomfortable for Adam to hear, but it was undeniable. Gansey had not ever needed to be any more than Gansey, and he certainly did not have to be any more than that for Blue.

So Adam said, putting it together, "He was recording the first time she'd met him. The time he walked the corpse road. For her it was the first meeting. For him, it hasn't happened yet. 'That's all there is' -- that was a Gansey who'd already died."

Ronan nodded once. 

"I think I knew back then," he said. "You know he's not -- when he first meets people. He's not him. He's fucking senator Gansey. He's not just Gansey, he's not real the way he is with us. He was being real with her then. He sounded real."

He looked away and Adam saw that his lashes were again too heavy and dark. Adam had an urge, unfamiliar and heady, to touch a finger to the corner of his eyes. 

Instead he said, "Why didn't you tell us then?" 

Ronan shrugged. "I thought if anyone was going to die, it would be you or me."

"Me?"

Ronan's brain had been breeding night horrors that had tried to kill him. Still did try, occasionally. But Adam?

"You were living in that trailer," Ronan said, managing to look both exasperated and wrathful. "What did you think we thought would happen to you?"

"It wasn't--" Adam began. _That bad._ That was how that sentence was supposed to go. But he swallowed the end before he got there. Of course it was; it always had been. He'd just been coping. Not even coping. Enduring. 

And Ronan, of course, heard the words he'd swallowed. He snorted. 

"It was bad enough that you never want to look at this town again, Parrish," he said. "Right?"

He wasn't wrong. But Adam didn't want to face this. This was too close to another fight, too raw. Ronan didn't want him to leave; he was sure of this. Ronan had tried to help him leave anyway. 

"Do you want me to go or not?" he asked, unable to help himself.

"I want you to go," Ronan snarled. "I don't want you here, miserable because you never got out of this shit town. I get that you have to go. I proved it, didn't I?" 

He gestured wildly at the second pair of seven-league boots, the pair his father had made, lying on the floor nearby. His voice went sharp. "I can fucking take you when you need to go. I will. Did you not get that?"

It was a nice enough promise, but Ronan looked completely enraged at the thought of what he was proposing.

"You're giving me mixed signals," Adam said.

"I'm not going to get to see you," Ronan snapped. 

It was Adam's turn to be exasperated. 

"Ronan, you have two pairs of seven-league-boots. You can come visit me whenever you want."

Ronan half-turned to look at him now, almost out of the corner of his eye. Like he was afraid to do this. This was yet another look Adam had never expected to see on Ronan Lynch. 

Terrified, but hopeful.

"Ronan," he said, shocked. "You know I want you to visit, right?"

But he saw at once that Ronan hadn't. He saw why Ronan hadn't. Ronan gave and gave and gave and gave to him. He did this angrily, he did it in a mood. He did it without ever saying he was doing it; and he did it in a way that Adam couldn't say no to, because he hardly ever made it seem like real giving. But in his own way he was honest about it. He had made it clear, in his own way, that helping Adam was what he meant to do, what he planned and wanted to do.

Adam, meanwhile, helped Ronan without admitting the whys and wherefores -- not even to himself. He helped Ronan under the guise of helping Matthew, helping Aurora, having a little free time, being intrigued by a problem, wanting to be something like the Magician.

 _What an appalling fake you are, Adam Parrish_.

He moved close to Ronan before Ronan could look away again. Ronan turned to him fully now, unsettled, like he couldn't predict what Adam would do next. Good. Adam couldn't really predict it either. He just did it. He brought his hands up and cupped Ronan's face. 

"I want you to visit," he told Ronan. "I want you to visit all the time." He brought their faces close, dipped down. Captured Ronan's lip. This would be a small thing. Like the palm-kissing -- he'd liked the way Ronan had done that. He'd liked the softness to it, he'd liked having something unexpected be wonderful, for once. He wanted to do that for Ronan.

But he found that he couldn't touch Ronan so gently. He didn't seem to have the restraint. The part of him that couldn't believe it was kissing Ronan, that he was allowed to touch Ronan's lips, somehow overrode the rest of him. He deepened it, becoming reckless. He didn't care if he was reckless. Ronan wasn't pushing him away. His hands curved around Adam's shoulders, pulling him in. He was making wild, breathy sounds. Ronan was often wild, but this was a wildness at Adam's disposal, asking for more. Adam was not used to being invited like this. Ronan was warm and terribly alive, and suddenly Adam wanted to touch every inch of him. He curled one hand around Ronan's neck and let the other drop to his waist, pulling them closer. 

He'd never been this close to someone before. He curved his fingers underneath Ronan's shirt now and tugged it up, feeling the heat of Ronan's stomach. He wanted to keep touching Ronan, keep kissing Ronan, but he wanted to see him too, see the planes of his stomach, his bare chest, his tattoo. It was a furious dilemma.

"Wait," Ronan said into his mouth. 

Pulling himself away was an effort. Adam felt hot and feral for a moment, hardly himself. His mind raced -- was he doing it wrong? He wanted to reach out and pull Ronan back, but Ronan moved away. Adam balled his hands to keep from grabbing at him, let himself exhale hard.

Ronan stood and pulled off his shirt. He was flushed all the way down to the trail of sparse hair that began at his navel. Adam stared at it, followed it down. Ronan was long everywhere, well-maintained, strong. Adam wanted to touch along the muscles on his stomach. He bit his lip and pushed down the impulse again.

Ronan crossed to where Chainsaw sat. He picked her up and walked her to the door. Then he threw her out. She gave an undignified kerah of protest.

"This isn't for you," he told her sternly, through the door. "Go to bed."

Then he came back. All of him. Adam moved back onto the bed to give them room. It occurred to him suddenly that they could do this lying down. They could do this in any way they wanted, any position. Okay, maybe not the listening position. But the other ones. He thought Ronan would be urgent and wild about it either way, but Ronan wasn't -- he was somehow more careful than usual. He stretched himself out next to Adam and lifted a hand to Adam's shoulder again, like he wasn't really sure he would be allowed.

Adam didn't intend to deny him. He pulled Ronan in again, moved them closer. Now he kissed along Ronan's neck -- strong, full of interesting curves. Ronan's skin was hot and flushed and Adam wanted to touch it all, dip down below the collarbones. He licked along Ronan's chest, found Ronan's nipple and tasted it, wondering, exploring. Ronan let out a satisfactory swear, voice thick. Adam could feel Ronan hard through his clothes. Good. He licked there again. He was ridiculously grateful to have a mouth and two hands now, because he could keep touching Ronan -- playing with his nipples, returning to his neck. There was more of Ronan than expected, strong jaw, long arms, good hard muscles along his abdomen. Adam was overwhelmed, but pushed past it. Here was a hollow in Ronan's neck, and he tasted it, sucked until he was satisfied; here was a spot by Ronan's hip that seemed sensitive, so he rubbed it and licked and let himself feel it. He hadn't realized how badly he would want to touch Ronan until now, suddenly, he had the chance to.

"Oh my god, you're so fucking greedy," Ronan said, voice going peculiarly high. "Who knew you were this greedy?"

He didn't sound upset by it, but he was still swearing after that, so Adam forced himself to stop. He moved so that he was straddling Ronan instead, feeling Ronan's dick better. Adam rubbed down briefly, experimentally, hoping Ronan could feel him too. Ronan let out another string of swears.

"Sorry," Adam managed. His breath came out faster than he expected. It was hard to talk. He kept noticing new things. The smattering of birthmarks on Ronan's abdomen. The small scar below one pectoral. Again those arms. Adam passed his hands along them, testing, feeling. He just wanted to touch them.

But he knew this had to be good for Ronan too, so he said, "I can stop. I can stop if this is too fast. I can--I can do what you want--"

Ronan swore again.

"What do you want?" Adam asked, briefly panicking. Ronan wasn't telling him. He was messing this up.

"I fucking wish I hadn't given you those clothes," Ronan said.

Somehow this penetrated where the swears hadn't. Adam stopped, looked down at himself. It hadn't occurred to him that Ronan would want to see him. Adam was gaunt, a little ragged. His muscles weren't cultivated and curving, just worked to death. People sometimes seemed to respond well to him, but it was a touch-and-go thing, purely subjective.

But Ronan sat up and hooked his fingers under Adam's shirt. He stopped there. Looked at Adam.

Adam pulled it up the rest of the way for him. It was only fair. He was pink and brown around his neck, face, and forearms, but chalkier beneath the shirt. He had more scars here and there than Ronan did, and Ronan would guess why. He had more hollows than Ronan did, too, and he was thinner. Nothing about him was particularly well-maintained.

But Ronan exhaled, deep and telling, and traced down Adam's chest very slowly. He settled back on one elbow. He took one of Adam's hands and touched it to his own, finger to finger, smiling, younger than Adam had ever seen him. He rubbed one corner of Adam's abdomen with his other hand, tracing the muscles there.

There was such _wonder_ on his face. Adam couldn't believe he brought out wonder in this boy. He curled his fingers around Ronan's, knotted their hands together. He rubbed down again, letting Ronan feel him, feeling Ronan in turn, and Ronan threw back his head and swore louder than ever. 

"Fuck, _fuck_ , you are so fucking--"

"That's right," Adam panted. "I like that. Keep doing that."

Ronan threw back his head and kept swearing, undone. Pleased, Adam pulled him in closer, rolled his hips. Rubbed harder, feeling the friction, the hidden length and thickness of Ronan, hoping Ronan could feel him back through the layers. It felt good, and once he got into a rhythm for it he didn't want to stop.

"Oh my god," Ronan said, voice ragged. "Fucking _god_."

Adam liked that so he kissed him again, deeper this time. He let his hands drop to Ronan's pants and undid them, tugged at them. When he got Ronan's dick free he thumbed the head the same way he did his own, let his hands fall into rhythm. No. A little slower, a little kinder, a little sweeter. Ronan should have it good. 

"Oh _shit_ to this fucking god," Ronan said.

Adam made vague noises of agreement. He bit Ronan's lip, sucked at it, tasted him. He was still rubbing his dick against Ronan's leg as he worked on him, the first slicks of his own pre-come dripping into the clothes Ronan had given him. It ached but felt good. It was a good kind of want, wanting while he made Ronan want in turn. 

Ronan pulled back, buried a fist in his mouth. Kept swearing around it. Adam watched him and was pleased. He was a dream-maker, a king in his own realm, savage and harsh and free. But he was staring, eyes wide, at Adam's hands, at Adam's clever fingers.

"Oh my god," he kept saying, spitting, sobbing. "Oh my god."

Ronan, the inveterate Catholic.

"How fast can you come?" Adam panted. "How fast? Do you want to come now? Do you want to come for me?"

He had hardly any time to reflect on why he was saying this before Ronan was nodding, swearing, every part of him humming his agreement. Adam kept stroking the hard length of him, making it good, making it better with every shift and change in breath. Ronan let go and leaned back and made agreeable, impossible, wonderful noises, loud and reckless. Adam saw it coming before it happened, the sheer vulnerable joy on his face, the raw ease of him. When he came he went limp with it, every part of him communicable, every part giving up for Adam.

He lay back on the bed, undone. Adam took one of the shirts -- his or Ronan's, he had no idea which -- and wiped him off. Tucked him away. This part he thought he could be soft about. He still ached, but he could handle his want, and he felt victorious. He could be soft about his victory.

"Good?" he asked Ronan gently. There was so much Ronan in front of him now that he couldn't seem to focus on keeping his accent away. Ronan didn't seem to mind. He swore softly, agreeably back. Divine and sated. Adam traced the soft skin of his stomach before swinging off of him, scooting to the edge of the bed to handle himself. He undid the button on his jeans swiftly, pulled down his underwear.

"I'm just going to--" he told Ronan. "You know." Then he took himself in hand, let himself give in to his want. This part he could handle. This was just Adam's body, straightforward, the usual thing.

But he heard Ronan shifting around on the bed, loud about that as he was with everything else. Then he was right there, at Adam's side, staring wide-eyed at him.

"Sorry," Adam said. "Sorry. I can go to the bathroom--" 

He didn't think he could, actually. Everything was too intense. Now he could think of Ronan as Ronan really was, better than the Ronan of his fantasies. But Adam was probably in the way here. 

" _Fuck_ that," Ronan said. "What do you--do you want--do you--"

He trickled off into muttered swears and got down from the bed, knelt before Adam, looked at Adam's hands and Adam's dick and put his own hands on Adam's thighs. It threw Adam off, but in a good way. Ronan before him. Ronan touching him. 

"That's good," Adam said, nodding. "Thank you. Thank you."

He didn't really know what he was saying at this point. Ronan didn't seem to know either. He was anxious and perfect in front of Adam, full of his customary angry energy, running his hands along Adam's thighs and tugging Adam's jeans and underwear down further, pulling them off as Adam tugged at himself.

"I can do it for you." he managed at some point, between swears. "Adam, I can-- I can-- Whatever you want. _Adam_."

It felt so good just to hear Ronan say his name like this. Adam could hardly believe he was being offered more. He thought of a million things he wanted -- Ronan's hands on him, Ronan's mouth on him, his mouth on Ronan. But what he said was, "Your back."

Ronan stared at him, blue eyes wide.

"Fuck you're dirty," he breathed out. "Fuck. _Fuck_. You want to come on my _back_?"

This was all wrong. Adam had done this wrong, made it ugly. He was ugly. He pulled off of himself with effort, leaned back. Shook his head. That would be like defacing Ronan, that would be wrong. He didn't -- even if he _did_ , he would never ask. He just wanted to see it. Trace the patterns, feel him. Have him. He shook his head harder.

"I just want to touch you--" he managed. "Your tattoo-- I know. It's a stupid idea. You won't even be able to do anything. I'll be looking at your back--"

"I'll tattoo my stomach, I'll tattoo my fucking _tongue_ if you like that," Ronan snarled. He turned around, let Adam see it. All of it, from his neck down to the curve of his ass -- god, his _ass_ , Ronan had an ass, of course he had an ass, Adam was so stupid--

"Good?" Ronan asked.

It was good. Adam came off the bed now and knelt before him, still so hard it was painful. He beat that back -- all the want like a fog in his brain -- to focus on what was being offered. He traced the leaves, the vines, the thorns. Ronan was living art, warm and patterned beneath his hands. Adam thought of what he was trying to say with this, and abruptly he was overcome with sadness, with the way Ronan had painted this hedge on himself, let everyone know.

A muddy forest. The things that hemmed you in, tied you down, the pieces of yourself that were wrong. That were a trap. Adam knew about that. He leaned carefully against Ronan, pressed his cheek to Ronan's back. Ronan inhaled sharply. Adam closed his eyes and stayed there, touching him. He hurt by now, he wanted so _badly_ , but he wanted to stay like this more. He traced one vine with a finger. 

"I know what this is," he told himself softly. 

He hated that he had known all along, but never considered whether Ronan might know too.

Ronan let out a ragged sound, a sound completely unlike him. Adam leaned back. He didn't know what he'd done. Maybe that had been wrong. He scrambled around to Ronan's front now, knowing he looked ridiculous, naked, too-thin, dick bobbing, leaking. 

"Sorry," he said. "Ronan, sorry. I didn't mean to--"

But for once Ronan was not angry. He pulled Adam in the direction of the bed and said, "Come on, Adam. Come on." 

That seemed to be about all he could manage, but he kept gesturing at Adam's dick, as he pulled them both up to standing, as they fell back onto his sheets. Adam was on his back and leaking furiously now. Ronan fell into place between his legs, put his hands on Adam's thighs again. His gaze was expectant, hopeful.

"Only if you want to," Adam managed. 

Ronan huffed. He wanted to. Now he had Adam laid out before him, took Adam in his hands. He was different from Adam in this, naturally languid and torturous. He tongued Adam's balls briefly, unexpectedly. Adam gasped and jerked up. Nearly came but was glad he didn't, because then Ronan's tongue was traveling along his length, Ronan's hands had switched to cupping him. Ronan worked with all parts of him, instinctive, caring for what he was doing, but not caring if what he was doing was weird. He nuzzled Adam's dick with his cheek, he breathed on it hotly, he let his hands take it and let his face dip down to lick at a space just below Adam's balls. Everything was hot and unexpected and strange, and now that it was Ronan's turn to explore he took his time about it, satisfied, creative as only a creator could be. Good at figuring out odd new ways to make Adam's heart race and his mind go wonderfully quiet.

"You don't make a sound," he said, between arrogant and delightfully wet sucks at the head of Adam's dick. "Adam, you're so quiet. You're so quiet. You don't make a fucking sound."

He sounded a little sad about it. Adam gave him an apologetic whimper. He didn't understand, though. Wasn't everyone quiet about this? Maybe Adam more than most. Paper-thin walls, his father right next door, Adam knowing what would happen if he were found out. He'd learned to be as quiet about these needs as he was with everything else. He wished he could be loud for Ronan. He wished he could do that for Ronan.

But then Ronan was sucking at the inside of his thighs and planting fond swears there as his hands worked Adam's dick. It felt strange and far too good to think of anything else. More intimate than anything Adam had ever been allowed before. And it was Ronan. This was Ronan doing this. Adam breathed hard and fisted his hands in the sheets and let Ronan do it.

"Adam," Ronan said. He licked his way back to Adam's dick. He was a little clumsy about getting his mouth around it right, but it felt good. Wet sucks again, coaxing out Adam's quiet moans.

"Adam," he said over and over. "Come on, Adam. Please."

It was the please that did it -- a word that really didn't belong to Ronan Lynch, a word that Adam should be offering _him_. It was the please and the way Ronan put his mouth on Adam's dick again right away, hot and wet and unconcerned. Adam tried to push him away, not wanting to come in his mouth like that, but Ronan, combative as always, waved him off and tried to go deeper. He was plainly as new at this as Adam was, so he didn't quite succeed, but it was enough. It was messy and awkward and enough and Adam came with a faint, exhausted sound, tears in his eyes.

He lay back on the bed and felt Ronan finish him off. Lick a little more, like it was something he wanted to do. Set Adam down. Spread out next to him.

Had he _swallowed_ it?

"Did you swallow it?" Adam asked, after a minute.

Ronan had by now captured one of his hands and was kissing it again, but he stopped long enough to say, annoyed, "What, like you're the only one here allowed to be a dirty fuck?"

"You're Catholic."

"I have confession tomorrow morning," Ronan snapped. "Let the fucking priest deal with it. What do you care?"

"I don't. It just seems like a surprise," Adam said.

In response, Ronan attacked his knuckles with furious kisses. Then he stopped, leaned over, pulled at one of his blankets until it was covering them both. Adam realized what time it must be.

"It's like midnight," Adam said. 

"Yeah, and I have mass in the morning and I need to go to sleep," Ronan said, still between kisses, but now sounding irritated. "So shut up."

"Kissing my hands isn't going to help you go to sleep," Adam said.

But he let Ronan do it until they both nodded off, curled along each other, still touching.


	10. Chapter 10

Ronan woke him once in the night. Maybe. Adam was mostly asleep when it happened. Ronan was whispering his name against his head. Wrong side, though. 

"Parrish," Ronan said, coming a little closer to his good ear. He sounded both furious and sad. Adam, half-asleep, decided that this was a dream. 

"Parrish. Adam. Adam. I won't fucking do it again. I won't. That shit -- 'white trash.' I won't do it. Okay?"

Adam batted at him with the first thing he could find. Some kind of living heart. In the morning he would realize that it was a pillow, but in the dark it thumped, rhythmic and comforting and confusing.

"I'm sleeping," he told Ronan the half-dream. 

He turned over and slept. 

When he woke up, he was covered in blankets, propped up by pillows. Ronan's mattress was entirely too soft and he let it lull him for a few moments before realizing, panicked, that he didn't know where he was.

Then he sat up and he did know. The night before came back to him. He wondered if he was crazy.

He wasn't. He was alone in Ronan's room, though. He stood up gingerly, found some pants, and went out into Monmouth's main room. Ronan was already dressed for mass, the sleeves of his expensive jacket rolled up, his tie looped around his throat like a noose -- another experiment in the best ways to infuriate Declan. He was picking cereal out of the box and tossing it into the air. Sometimes he caught it. Sometimes Chainsaw did.

"Should she be eating that?" Adam asked. 

Ronan threw cereal at him. It made a wide arc in the air and, on instinct, Adam moved and caught it in his mouth. For a second he thought he might choke, but he managed to swallow it down smoothly. Ronan made a sweep with one hand like he was impressed. Adam felt strangely pleased.

"It would go better with milk."

"I'm not your maid," Ronan said. "You know where the milk is."

So Adam ducked into the kitchen/bathroom/laundry room to rub at his eyes and get the milk. He snagged a bowl and utensils from the shelf in the main room, then sat down with Ronan to eat. 

Ronan threw cereal at his bird and watched Adam. 

Several times Adam glanced up and watched back. For once, there was no challenge. Ronan was still Ronan but Adam didn't want this to be a challenge, and it wasn't. They could look at each other. Adam liked looking. He looked at Ronan's well-muscled forearms, his mouth, his eyes. 

Ronan was grinning by the time Adam finished. Not just grinning. Smiling. It was such a rare, open thing on him. Adam felt different to see it. He hardly noticed that his lips were curling too, that the lighter he looked, the lighter Ronan looked, that they were sitting there staring. Smiling.

"Kerah!" Chainsaw said sharply.

They snapped back to her. She was gazing angrily at the cereal box, entirely Ronan's bird. Ronan leveled a finger at her and said, "Be a lady," and she looked at him balefully. She ruffled her feathers out, hopped to the edge of the table, and then flew out of the nearest window. That about summed that up. She knew and he knew and Adam knew that Ronan had never taught her to be anything like a lady. Or maybe Ronan had, but he probably had strange ideas about what ladies were.

Either way, it was good that they'd been interrupted. Adam had to be at work. He dared to spend a minute hoping that Boyd would let him off again today, but it seemed unlikely. Two days off in a row would be a special kind of impossibility. 

"Garage?" Ronan asked now, casual.

Adam nodded. "Nothing this afternoon, though."

No. Not quite nothing. Now he felt an insistent throbbing, a pull. Cabeswater. Something like a leaf-pattern danced on the far wall, or maybe just along the inside of his head. The forest had another task for him. This was dully disappointing. He'd resolved to help Cabeswater and he would, but he hadn't known what he could have been doing instead when he'd made that resolution. So now he had Boyd's and then this new task to fix the line; and probably he should go to Aglionby to drop off his art history essay ahead of time, in case he had another task tomorrow morning; and probably he should go talk to Cabeswater about college, too; and always, of course, there was the problem of Gansey's death to think of.

He hadn't realized that he'd spent these first few minutes of the morning feeling lighter than usual. But now, as the coming day pressed in on him, he realized. He closed his eyes. This was fine. This was his life. He could not expect his life to change drastically, miraculously, just because he'd finally understood that he wanted to spend more of it with Ronan Lynch.

"Sorry," he told Ronan now. "That's actually wrong. I have a Cabeswater thing--"

"What kind of thing?" Ronan interrupted.

Adam hand't intended to tell him. He usually didn't tell anyone Cabeswater's details. It took time to suss them out, for one thing. For another, he was the Magician and this was his task, his job. It would be like explaining how to assemble a sunroof or replace an engine. He didn't expect anyone to be interested, and he didn't want to interest people with _that_ part of him anyway.

But telling Ronan seemed alright. Ronan already knew what Adam spent his time doing. Anyway, if Ronan thought it was boring, Ronan would almost certainly say so.

So he sat at the table and let himself feel the distant throbbing of the line and then the hum of Cabeswater. He put together what details he could from it. Something to do with a tangled hedge out near Rudd Ridge, rocks choking the roots and blocking the path of the line.

"I'll know more when I get out there," he told Ronan. "It's hard to tell sometimes without scrying."

Ronan scowled, vitriol and thunder.

Right. He didn't like that. Too bad.

"I have to scry," Adam said.

"You wouldn't have to if Cabeswater were clearer with you in the first place," Ronan snapped, and pushed off from the table, starting for Noah's room.

Adam supposed this was better than fighting again. He hoped this wasn't a fight. He didn't have time for a fight and he didn't want one, so he let Ronan go and went back to the bathroom. Gansey kept new toothbrushes in a fancy glass jar on top of the fridge, so Adam took one and removed it from its packaging, turning it over and vowing to at least pay back five dollars. It couldn't be more than five dollars, right? It whirred when you pressed a button. It had to be more. He brushed his teeth with it anyway; he didn't have anything else. Then he went back to Ronan's room and dug up the clothing Ronan had given him last night. The underwear and jeans were not exactly clean at this point and he frowned, turning them over in his hands. He'd worn dirtier, probably. And he should probably go get some coveralls before heading to Boyd's anyway, so he'd only have to wear this to St. Agnes.

Of course, he didn't know how he would get to St. Agnes. Ronan would walk them there, maybe. In those marvelous boots that worked only for Ronan. Adam looked around for them and found both pairs in the main room of Monmouth Manufacturing now, lined up by the door.

Ronan cleared his throat.

He wheeled something out of Noah's room now. A bicycle. There were clean coveralls on the seat. He looked secretive and focused all at once, the Ronan who could dream up hand lotion, who'd managed to get them to Italy. Somehow a more _adult_ Ronan. 

Ronan. The boy who even Gansey thought would never really mature. 

The bike could have been Adam's bike, if Adam's bike were new and shining and came with expensive tires. 

"I wasn't dreaming you another shitty car," was all Ronan said now, to explain. 

Chainsaw back in with a pair of dead mice for each of them. It was unclear whether Ronan had learned his gifting impulse from her, or she her from him. Adam watched with a slightly sinking heart as Ronan balled her treasures in a napkin and put them away in a drawer. 

"I thought you were going to St. Agnes anyway. I thought we were -- you know -- walking there," he said. "You didn't need to dream me this. You could have just--"

"Gansey _bought_ you this eight months ago and it's been sitting around ever since he figured out he shouldn't give it to you," Ronan said, rolling his eyes. "I just made these overall things. It doesn't make sense for you to come with me to St. Agnes. Mass is at eight and you have to be at Boyd's at seven-thirty."

Right. That was true. Adam took the coveralls. Then Ronan took a pair of seven-league boots and began winding the laces around the bike, securing them. Adam stared at this.

"I thought you said I couldn't use them."

"I didn't fucking say that."

"Yes you did."

"I said it wasn't easy," Ronan corrected. "It's not. I have to figure out how to teach you. My dad's feet would start bleeding whenever he told them what to do. Mine don't, but I don't know what they'll do to you if you try to boss them around. I tried to make mine different from his, but I don't know."

He sounded frustrated, beset by impossibilities. Ronan's dreams were all impossible, he _lived_ as an impossibility, and he had to know that. It had to be painful. Adam sat on a nearby stool and watched him and said, "Tried to make them different how?"

"You just--just think where you want to go," Ronan muttered. "And you don't keep taking steps with them on, because they can think too. They have to, to get you across all the space -- like, you'd rather have an airplane that can compute than some Wright brothers shit."

"Sure," Adam said. It made sense. In a roundabout way.

"He used to say that his would do what he wanted because his mind was stronger than theirs, but they were cowards and wanted to punish him for it. Cowards don't like a strong mind. He had to dream them cowardly because only a coward would want to leave home the way they did, only a coward would pull him away like that. So he made his boots cowards, and they punished him for it."

His voice was rough. He wasn't looking at Adam as he spoke. Adam felt a prickle of hatred for Niall Lynch. 

"Did you make yours cowardly?" Adam asked.

"No," Ronan snapped. "I made them like you. They want to leave because they know they have the right to. They want to leave because there's nothing for them where they are; they're fucking _magic_ , they can do what they want."

"They didn't make my feet bleed," Adam said. "And I'm pretty strong-minded."

"I was thinking the destination for you," Ronan said. "When I took us to Italy. I wanted to be the one to take the punishment."

"And your feet are fine," Adam pointed out.

Ronan seemed to be coming to this realization on his own, but clearly something was prompting him to talk about it. Adam guessed that he wanted reassurance. Ronan never asked for it outright, never gave any indication that he needed it. But Adam thought it was still written all over him most of the time. Ronan, who wanted to be a snake and who thought he was a snake, but who was sometimes as fragile as a newly-made Chainsaw.

Adam planted a kiss in the corner of his mouth before grabbing the coveralls and heading to the bathroom to change. He thought the kiss might help. Maybe it did. When he came back out to the main room, Ronan was calmly, purposefully porting himself from one side of the room to the other. Figuring it out. Adam sat and watched him. He liked this busy Ronan. 

But soon it was time to leave. Ronan used the boots to teleport to the doorway just as he left, an arrogant terror about him now that he thought he might be able to use them with impunity. Adam rolled his eyes and pulled at the disheveled tie and kissed him again. There was a livid purple mark on Ronan's neck. He tapped it lightly. Ronan swore and shoved him away. And then that was it. It was a relief that this was it. They hadn't been sappy before. They'd been alright when they left each other. It didn't have to be any different now.

But it was harder to focus on his work now. Boyd set him to changing the oil on a battered Ford as soon as he arrived, and Adam found himself distracted. He set out plastic, drove the car onto it, jacked it up, set up the stands, lowered the car. On automatic. Then he got under the Ford and blinked away from all of that. He thought instead of Ronan's back warm on his cheek, Ronan's mouth on him, Ronan wild and _his_.

He had these memories now. Private, perfect.

"Where's your head?" Boyd barked, coming by and finding Adam immobile. "You're gonna need to get more oil on that filter gasket, Adam, come on!"

Adam was knocked back to attention. He apologized hurriedly. 

"Shit-for-brains is going around," Boyd muttered, walking away. Adam felt briefly stung by the unfairness -- he'd always done perfectly attentive work before -- but then Zach Boyd shuffled into view, looking apologetic, and Adam understood why Boyd was upset.

"Sorry," Zach said. "He's mad because I didn't show up at my homecoming party."

He squatted down by Adam and added, a little awkwardly, "Want my help?"

Adam shook his head. Zach took a wrench and leaned in, getting low and loosening the last screw anyway.

"I need to get paid for this," Adam said.

"I'm not here to take your job," said Zach. 

But he didn't stop helping here or there, and he didn't leave either. He said, "I'm leaving soon."

Adam thought that made sense. He was in the army.

"I got into a college in Huntington," Zach said. "Community college. But if I do a few years there I can transfer. Army's not really for me. I just didn't want to stay here, you know?"

Adam obviously did, so he kept his focus on the car and kept working.

"My granddad says you're heading to college. That's good. You're smart. People were pretty floored when you got into Aglionby--"

Adam knew this because he'd lived it. There had been comments wherever he'd gone -- the factory, the grocery store, here at Boyd's. There had been comments to his parents. Adam's father had made sure Adam knew about every single one.

"--but I always thought you were smart. You could go straight to UVA or something."

"Or something," Adam agreed. He wished Zach would leave. Zach had helped him yesterday, but he didn't want to have this conversation with Zach. Growing up, he'd wanted to put roots here, make friends, be normal. But he hadn't been. He'd been polite, deferential Adam Parrish, who had to be home by three-thirty if school ended at three. Quiet Adam Parrish, whose recurring sprains and broken bones made sports a special challenge. Adam Parrish, whose parents were _strict_. 

Knocked around, but raised right. Raised to be respectful.

Now he tasted something sour in the back of his throat. He was glad he was lying here under a car. No one would notice if he rolled over and choked out his sudden fury on the plastic-covered pavement. Maybe Boyd would notice. Adam would clean it up, though, so he wouldn't care.

"You okay?" Zach asked hurriedly.

"Do you want something?" Adam said.

Zach was silent. Adam closed his eyes, told himself it was fine. He didn't owe this town anything. He didn't owe Zach anything.

Except that, horribly, he kind of did. Zach had beaten back a monster yesterday.

"Sorry," Adam muttered. 

"It's fine," Zach said awkwardly. Then, in a rush, "Did you leave home because of that shit yesterday, Adam? Are you in trouble?"

By now the gasket was in and tightened. Adam wiped the drips with a rag, beating back the muddy bitterness in his head, and slid out from under the car. He stared at Zach.

"Do you _think_ that's why I left?" he asked.

Zach looked confused. "I don't know, man. That shit yesterday was-- I mean, this town's always been weird, but that was--"

"Do you think I didn't have any other reason to leave?" 

He was overwhelmed and furious again, so he twisted away from Zach and tried to calm himself. This wasn't okay. Not here. This was work.

"Look," Zach said. "I heard about you taking your dad to court. It seemed like a lot. Last night just got me wondering if there was really something else going on. If you were doing this to keep them away from some monster or something--"

 _Why?_ Adam thought furiously. _Why would you wonder that? Why would you need another monster to make it make sense? Was he not monster enough?_

But Robert Parrish had never really been a monster to anyone but Adam. Adam closed his eyes and breathed out. Massaged his temples.

He'd tuned Zach out, but Zach was still talking.

"--and I see your momma sometimes, you know. She's doing okay. Told her I saw you this morning, but I didn't tell her about the--"

"Did she ask about me?" Adam asked sharply. He dared to shoot a look back at Zach. Zach looked uneasy.

"No," he admitted. "But--"

"Did she say anything, when you told her how I was doing?"

"No," Zach said.

It shouldn't hurt. It shouldn't. Adam wouldn't let it. He stood jerkily, awkwardly, and began to gather up his tools. 

"I didn't leave to protect her," Adam told Zach. "She doesn't need my protection. She never needed any protection."

Zach rubbed a hand along his neck, tense.

"I wouldn't say _that_ \--"

"Did you ever see a bruise on her?" Adam said. It felt foul, evil to say it. It felt like something he shouldn't be putting out there. Every hair on him stood up, every piece of him revolted against actually saying it -- he'd been told for so long in so many ways that he should not say it -- but he bit that all back.

"There was never a bruise on her. Only on me," Adam said. He was shaking. He had to hold his toolbox with both hands because he was worried he would drop it if he didn't. He said, "I left for me. That was it."

Then he turned and lurched back to Boyd, who was in the back mumbling over some receipts. Adam hoped Zach wouldn't follow and he didn't. Good. Work seemed even more interminable now -- several more oil changes, some wiring repairs -- but at least he could do it alone. He was too upset to let himself think of Ronan now. Ronan seemed like something that should be reserved for some other, better Adam. But at least this meant he could focus on the cars. The time crawled, but Adam spent it all with his hands busy, his mind busy. When the end of his shift came at three, he was calmer. Still a little raw, inside. But calmer.

But Zach was waiting by his bike, downing a beer and admiring the tires. He held his hands up in a peace gesture before Adam could say anything.

"Look," Zach started lamely. "You're a good kid. Everybody always said so."

"I bet they don't say it anymore," Adam said. He tried to be quick about untying the bike, but it came with an extraordinarily fancy keyless lock. Even Adam had to try a few times before he figured it out. 

"Some people still say it," Zach said. "I still say it."

Adam shrugged. That wasn't much help to him.

"Just--let me know if you need help fighting a fucking monster again?" Zach said. "Okay? I know you've got it, but we'd help if you asked."

Adam stared at him now. Somehow this seemed hollow and worthless. He felt like he would be angry -- should be angry, for once; surely he had the right to be angry about this. But he wasn't. He was exhausted. He'd been angry too often lately. He didn't have the energy now. Where had this help been when he'd needed it?

Then Boyd was shouting Zach's name, so Zach gave Adam an awkward pat on the elbow and stood, crossing into the garage. 

"I'm serious -- let us know if we need to help with that shit," he called over his shoulder. "I'll come. Brandon'll come. I don't know about Tyler."

Maybe that was the most Adam could expect. 

It was certainly more than Adam asked for these days. He swung onto his bike and took a path that followed the ley line back to St. Agnes. It took longer than the most direct route, but it gave him time to settle himself onto it, align himself. He felt better after that. 

He felt a better with the line reminding him that there were other places, other beings, more to the world than just this one place that was too little, too late for Adam Parrish.

St. Agnes was cool and dark when he reached it. Homely as ever and never quite his home. Adam ate a quick meal of whatever he could scrounge up -- which was depressingly little, since he'd eaten nearly everything yesterday. As he polished off a can of cold tuna, he ran through his mental checklist of tasks. Cabeswater came first. He looked for signs of it, like he'd seen this morning, but it had calmed down. Maybe its task hadn't been urgent. As long as it stayed not-urgent, he could do other things, so he finished eating and changed into something less grease-stained, balled together the laundry to do tomorrow, looked over his art history essay again. He thought he could deliver it today after he went to Cabeswater. Then maybe he would head to Monmouth to research whatever Gansey had on ley line monsters targeting Welsh-king-obsessed young men.

 _Obviously I'll have to broaden those search terms_ , he told himself, when he'd climbed into the Hondayota. 

Gansey. Gansey would die. This was the biggest thing. He had to determine _how_ it would happen, and _why_. He had to name the dimensions of the problem. Then he would know how to fix it.

He pulled onto the road by Cabeswater still thinking it over, trudged across the field still consumed with it. By the time he was climbing over the gnarled roots, picking his way through the thick birch grove near the front, he'd made up his mind to ask Cabeswater about it. Three things to explain now: one, the forest needed to help save Gansey. It had protected Gansey sometimes before, when they'd asked. Surely it could do it again. Two, the forest needed to try not to get possessed. Three, the concept of college.

He didn't really know how to communicate that last one to a bunch of magic trees. He was trying to figure this out when Aurora leaned out from behind an oak and waved at him. He stared at her.

"I thought you would have come before," she said happily.

"Why? Was Ronan here?" Adam said. 

Of course Ronan had been here. It was Sunday. He'd be bringing Matthew to see their mother after mass. But Adam hadn't noticed any tracks from the BMW when he'd crossed the field.

Aurora took his hand and led him to a spot on the grass. She said, as though she could read his mind, "Oh. Oh, Ronan. Right. He walked." She looked very happy about this, her eyes lit and bright, her dimples out in full force. 

She added, "He hardly ever uses his father's things now. I wish he would. I wish he would, you know."

Adam didn't feel like he had any right to discuss the inner workings of the Lynch family, but he wanted to defend Ronan in this. He explained, haltingly, about the boots and their cowardice and Ronan's face when he'd mentioned his father's bleeding feet.

Aurora laughed. She had a laugh like the chiming chandeliers in her tree-house.

"Oh, that," she said. "Niall was so funny. He was so funny when he told stories like that."

"I don't think it's funny for Ronan," Adam said stiffly. 

She looked at him as though she couldn't understand this.

"Forget it," Adam said. "Never mind." 

He wasn't here to discuss this. He was here to make things clear to Cabeswater, so that they were on the same page. But he wasn't sure his Latin was strong enough. He traced out possible translations in the dirt. Aurora watched him do this patiently, and, because she looked curious, he explained his purpose here as best he could.

"Oh, I can tell them," Aurora said. "I was born here, you know. I'm from them."

Adam stared at her.

"They are me," Aurora said daintily. "I am them. Magic is dreams because dreams are energy and so is magic. And so am I."

It was roundabout Persephone logic, which was to say half-illogical. Adam blinked at her. She poked him lightly in the chest. 

"What _you_ are," she told him, more seriously now, "Is a caretaker, a person who makes dreams stronger until they feel like they can be made real. I'm glad." 

Then she stretched out on the grass, long legs burrowing into the dirt, and said something. Adam could not understand the language. It was some _not_ -language, maybe the language of Ronan's long-ago puzzle box. Whatever it was, Cabeswater hummed back to her, its words not words but rustling leaves, snapping branches, rushing water. Forest.

Periodically she broke off to ask Adam to clarify things. Why was Gansey important? Should she say king or friend? Both? There was no word for both. They would be so confused. She was confused. And they needed a better word for the third sleeper -- everything was a sleeper to the trees. Everything slept to come here. The ley lines existed on the other side of sleeping. And the thing that had poisoned Cabeswater before was _awake_ now, which was really the problem.

Adam thought this was surprisingly clever and said so.

"Oh, no," Aurora said matter-of-factly. "No, I'm not clever. I wasn't designed that way. What was the other thing?"

"College," Adam said. "They need to know I'm leaving for college. I can't be with them forever. I'll come back sometimes if I have to -- Ronan and I are working on that. But someday I'm not going to live here. I'm going away to college."

"Right, what is college?" Aurora said.

"I thought they would ask that," Adam said.

" _I'm_ asking that," Aurora said. "What is college?"

So then he stopped and explained, and she told the trees in turn, and Adam was surprised to find that she was on his side about it, very much convinced that the trees had no right to keep Adam here.

"I could never do it with Niall," she told Adam. "Dreams shouldn't lock real things into place. Dreams should be for helping you grow."

She was very easy to talk to, even for Adam. There was something innately comforting about her, something that made him feel lighter and better for her presence. He thought she made Cabeswater feel lighter too. Once he realized that the rustle of the forest was a language to Aurora, he could hear it talking to her all the time. She explained that it was mostly nonsense, but then what she said was usually nonsense too, because she'd been made that way.

"Ronan wants you to be able to leave here," Adam told her.

She shrugged.

"Your sons miss you," Adam said.

"Matthew," she replied. She was prompt about it, as though she thought she were being tested.

"And Ronan," Adam said.

"Right. Ronan," she said. "We were just talking about him. And he was here. I remember."

"And probably even Declan," Adam said.

She looked very beautifully puzzled for a minute. Then she said, "Right! Right. Declan. My son, Declan."

Adam stared at her. She whistled at the trees until they rustled more nonsense for her.

"You know you have three sons, right?" Adam said. She must have given birth to two. She must have lived with them. "You lived with them for years at Barns," Adam told her.

She stared at him.

"The Barns," Adam said. "It's your home. Ronan never wants to leave it."

Aurora scrunched up her nose. 

"Oh," she said. "Right. I didn't like it. I missed it here. Not that I could have left. I couldn't leave them. He didn't make me for that."

She didn't seem shaken about this, but a part of Adam was shaken for her. He wondered if Ronan had ever spoken to her about this. He wondered how he could help Ronan, how he might make things alright for Ronan, once Ronan did.

Aurora was able to translate a few more things. She helped Adam make sure Cabeswater knew to be on the alert, and she made Cabeswater promise to protect Gansey when it could. She was even able to make the trees grumble less about college. 

"He's going to go no matter what you do!" she told them. "Stop grousing." And she tossed acorns at the branches and Adam had a brief, wistful vision of growing up with a mother like this, cheerfully prodding you whenever you were down.

But she couldn't seem to keep too many thoughts in her head at a time. Niall she kept returning to. Matthew as well. Ronan could be prodded out of her. Declan was much harder. 

It must have been hard, too, to grow up with someone this blithe, someone who retained no impression of your cruelties, who was incapable of abandoning you. Not hard because Ronan had had her. But hard when he'd lost her, and had to see the world for what it was. 

Because he knew she wouldn't retain this, Adam explained it to her.

"Is he out in the world now?" Aurora asked interestedly. "Your Ronan?"

" _Your_ Ronan," Adam said.

"Right," she said, as her middle son came back to her. "But he's better off, you know. Out there." She waved a hand to signify all the hard things that were not Aurora, that Aurora herself could never begin to guess at. 

"He's choosing someone who's not like me," she said. "Good. I don't know. I think it's good."

Then she leaned in and tapped his bad ear, pointed at the trees. Adam protested, but she waved her hands again, making it seem like a very pleasant gesture because she had very beautiful hands. Adam stilled and listened. He felt the great brightness of the ley line underneath him and the happy murmur of the trees around him.

"They listened," he said, after a moment. It seemed impossible but it was true. He'd thought it would take more arguing than this, that it would be harder. But it hadn't been so hard at all. He said, still wondering at it, "They're alright with it." 

"Sure, sure," said Aurora. "They have to be, anyway. They like you too much. You warn them about the things they can't know fully themselves. They're bad at thinking. And they don't understand time, so whatever's coming makes no sense to them. They're not like you. They're just magic."

And she stretched herself out again on the earth and hummed nonsense at the trees. That was how he left her. Perfectly happy to stay where she was, but then she wasn't like Adam. She seemed to have been designed this way.


	11. Chapter 11

He made it back to Aglionby as Sunday came to a close. It would be ten minutes until school staff locked Burwell Hall for the night, so he didn't worry about parking where no one would see the Hondayota. He parked on the main green and ran out, essay in hand. Unusually for Aglionby, no one was playing lacrosse or field hockey or lazing around on the grass. Everyone was gathered at the steps of Burwell Hall, a sea of North Face pullovers and pastel polos and worried faces.

When Adam got closer, he could see why. Henry Cheng was haranguing people furiously, hands cupped around his mouth like a makeshift megaphone. For once, people seemed to be listening. Tad Carruthers sat on the step next to him, collecting signatures. Cheng Two held up a sign behind their heads. It said, 

DO **YOU** PAY SIXTY THOUSAND PUR YEAR TO RISK AVIAN FLU?

Gansey was not here to wince at the spelling error, so Adam winced on his behalf. He shouldered his way through the crowd. It was tough going. The most anxious listeners were all broad-shouldered and immovable. The crew team.

Mansfield stood off to one side, supervising and looking bad-tempered. He whirled on Adam when Adam reached him. Adam held up his essay and said, "I have to turn this in, sir."

Mansfield nodded. Unfortunately, the delay was enough to alert Cheng to Adam's presence. He whirled on Adam, hands still cupped around his mouth.

"ADAM PARRISH. MY MAN ADAM PARRISH. LET ME TELL YOU. FOR SIXTY THOUSAND--"

Adam shook his head rapidly. He did not pay sixty thousand. He did not make sixty thousand. Sixty thousand was more than any of his family made in even a year. Without even thinking about it, he took the last three steps to the hall at a run.

"--YOU RISK EXTREME ILLNESS GOING IN THERE!" Cheng said. "I AM WARNING YOU, PARRISH."

Carruthers now abandoned his petition to sprint after Adam and catch his sleeve. Everyone stared at them. Adam looked frantically at Mansfield for help and in response Mansfield looked frantically at the darkening sky, like he hoped another flock of birds would come down and put an end to this weekend once and for all.

But then Cheng turned back to the crowd, as though afraid to lose them, and picked a new victim in the huddled mass below the steps. 

"SKIP WHITTAKER MY MAN--"

Tad said, "Listen, Parrish, I don't think you want to go in there. You're not going to be able to handle what you find. Yesterday a flock of birds came in through the vents--"

"Windows," Adam corrected.

"What?"

"Nothing," Adam said. He knew Tad would go on as though he hadn't spoken. Adam might be a magician to Ronan and to the trees, but to most of Aglionby he was just Gansey's friend who was on scholarship. He wasn't expected to know or say anything of value.

Tad did go on as though Adam hadn't spoken. 

"They must have been nesting in the walls. They're going to cancel classes tomorrow to fumigate--"

"Fumigate?"

"It's a way of disinfecting buildings," Tad said patronizingly. "Like a deep clean. You know, like when you go to a spa -- not that I do that. That would be gay -- anyway, my point is, anything could attack you in there."

"Did something attack you?" Adam asked.

"I fought them off," Tad said quickly. "You should have seen me. I said to Skip--"

"Ronan told me you ran for the door."

Tad blinked, looked momentarily befuddled. Since it made him look less patronizing, that was fine. Tad began fiddling nervously with his very expensive watch, so Adam was able to brush past him and enter the building.

It was cool and dark inside, and Cheng's shouting faded away as soon as the heavy doors closed shut. Adam went up to the art history classroom and dropped his essay through the slot on the door, then took the stairs down more slowly. He'd thought it would be hard to come back here after the vines had held him down yesterday, but it wasn't. He wasn't afraid. He knew more about what he was facing now, at least. There was power in that.

Just as he reached the ground floor, someone darted into the building. Screams and shouts came through before the door closed. Adam stared across the hall through the gloom.

Ronan. Grinning.

He crossed to Adam, took his hand and kissed it briefly -- what was with Ronan and hands? And how could he make a such gentlemanly gesture look half-criminal? -- then said, "Wait here," and dashed up the stairs with his own essay.

Adam didn't wait. He needed to know what the screams were about. 

Outside, on the stoop, students cowered and scattered. Henry Cheng took shelter under the sign Cheng Two was holding. Mansfield was the one talking now.

"IT APPEARS TO BE ONE BIRD. I REPEAT: IT IS ONE BIRD AND IT IS A STUDENT'S PET AND NOW IT WILL BE BANNED."

Noah sat wispily on the top step, happily watching the chaos.

"Chainsaw's dive bombing," he informed Adam. He was more human than he'd been the day before. Adam knew from experience that he might not even remember what had happened. Time seemed to work differently for Noah. Adam sat down next to him.

Chainsaw was, in fact, dive bombing. She picked off members of the crew team, screeching as she came down for them, leaving them screaming and diving out of the way. She seemed to take particular issue with Tad Carruthers.

"So much for bravely defending himself," Adam said.

"Boo hoo," Noah agreed.

But Adam was bothered by the thought that now Chainsaw might be banned. He didn't like to think of Ronan being forced to go without her.

Noah shrugged.

"He only comes here because you and Gansey do," he told Adam. "Maybe he won't come. Maybe he'll drop off the roster. That makes two of us if he drops off the roster."

"I hope he doesn't," Adam said.

He meant it. Ronan didn't try very hard at school, but it was still good that Ronan tried. And Adam liked having him in classes. Some days, if he didn't see Ronan in classes, then he didn't see him at all. 

"Well, there's nights," Noah said, which was just what Adam had been thinking. Then Noah looked alarmed and said, " _Ugh_."

"Ugh what?" Ronan said, coming out of Burwell Hall.

"They're banning your bird," Adam informed him.

"Don't have sex when I'm around," Noah begged.

"Don't be around," Ronan said. "Let's go." 

He started nonchalantly down the stairs, surveying the scattering students, ignoring Mansfield's loud instructions to remove his bird from the premises. Adam followed him. He should still do the task for Cabeswater, probably, but before that he could at least walk Ronan to the BMW. 

But Ronan walked to the Hondayota instead. He was wearing his father's boots. He must have been teleporting from place to place all day. Now he jiggled the door the way he'd learned, the way that undid the lock. He slid into the front passenger seat. Noah somehow blurrily managed to get into the back without actually opening a door, which felt off but also felt decidedly Noah. So Adam let them be and climbed into the driver's seat, started the car. He knew it would take a while to get it running and it did, which was good, because it gave Chainsaw time to finish terrorizing the student body, get bored, and come peck at Ronan's window.

Ronan rolled it down and plucked her out of the air. He settled her fluidly in his lap. He was spread out along the seat and Adam had to look away and focus hard on starting the car -- now he couldn't help but notice how well Ronan wore even his customary arrogant leisure. Privately, he hoped he didn't start deciding that everything about Ronan was attractive. Some things decidedly weren't, and Adam didn't want to become embarrassing about this. 

"Oh my god, I wish this car would start," Noah moaned.

Ronan nodded. "Piece of shit," he said, perfunctory about it. Then, to Adam, "So what else do you have to do tonight?"

The Gansey problem. And Cabeswater's task. Adam explained his plans for both and let his mind reach out for the ley line as he did so, let himself drift a little towards the forest. He probably should have done the task sooner, but Cabeswater had stopped being insistent about it. It hadn't pestered Adam once while he'd been with Aurora.

_Why_ soon became clear. Ronan reached into the pockets of his hoodie and produced rocks. Lots of rocks. Some large as his palms, some small. He scattered them messily along the dashboard in front of Adam and Adam, annoyed, said, "I know it's a cheap car. You don't have to make it worse."

But when he picked up one of the rocks, it burned in his hands. Charged. Ley-touched. Like it had been sitting somewhere, soaking in the line's power, blocking the line from its course.

"You did the task?" he said abruptly.

This made no sense. He was the Magician. He was Cabeswater's eyes and hands. It was his job to follow Cabeswater's commands, and he said as much.

"Uh, other people have hands too," Noah said. Ronan, theatrical, only lifted up both his palms and wiggled his fingers. He smirked.

"But how did you know what to do?" Adam demanded,

"I asked," Ronan said, rolling his eyes. "And I told it that you're not going to be here forever, and I told it that maybe sometimes instead of being a fucking asshole, it could just ask me to do what it needed."

"But you're the Greywaren," Adam protested.

Just what the Greywaren was wasn't entirely clear, but Adam was pretty sure that it meant Ronan outranked him. Cabeswater liked Adam because Adam had bargained with it, because Adam was useful to it. Cabeswater liked Ronan because Ronan was Ronan.

Ronan rolled his eyes. "Right, so we're all on the same fucking team," he told Adam.

He said it so easily, carelessly, like of course they were. A team. But his carelessness was a front. When it came to things like this he was not careless. You were either in with Ronan, or you were out. You were something he adored, you were within his orbit, his unit. Or you were nothing.

Adam supposed that he'd been in for a long time, that of course he'd been, he had to have counted as someone Ronan cared about ever since -- ever since the night he'd left the double-wide behind. Maybe before then. 

Miraculously, though, the Hondayota started up before he could think about it more than that. He focused on getting them to Monmouth instead of on the way this new information scraped away something inside him, hollowed out a piece of him and revealed another Adam, that younger Adam again, stupid and trusting and so Henrietta-dirty that it almost hurt.

"I helped pick up rocks too," Noah said, a little sullenly.

"Yeah. So did Matthew," said Ronan. "He liked it."

Matthew would enjoy dental surgery if Ronan told him to, so Adam didn't comment on this. Instead he said, "We can't fix the line totally. Not until we deal with the third sleeper. If we get the line as bright as the one in Rome--"

Ronan swore.

"It'll be able to move off of it," he spat, finishing the thought for Adam.

Adam nodded. He wondered if the third sleeper was the only monster on the line. He wondered how you got monsters there in the first place. The line wasn't suited to them, not any more than it was suited to anything innately good. It was energy. It didn't have a moral compass. He said all this aloud, puzzling it out, knowing Ronan would listen to him. Ronan did, letting him talk it out.

But a few minutes in, Noah said, voice odd, "Monsters get there the same way everything does. They're dreamed."

Adam's eyes flicked up to meet his, briefly, in the mirror. Noah didn't look like Noah anymore. He looked like he had yesterday. Like something else was rolling around in his head. He patted absently at the smudge on his cheek and somehow distorted it, made it deeper, darker, more like living death. Adam looked hurriedly at the road again.

But Ronan turned around in his seat.

"What the hell does that mean?" he demanded.

Something about Noah seemed to fade out. Adam didn't want him to go before he answered Adam's other questions, so he said quickly, sharply, "Are there other things? Are there other monsters?"

"There have been other dreamers," Noah said. 

His voice had that humming, unreal edge to it. Not the voice of a dead and fading boy, but an older voice, maybe the voice of the line itself. 

The line said, "Why would the forest need hands and eyes, if there was nothing to block and watch out for?"

Ronan swore again.

"I can't believe it. You're the Slayer," he told Adam. 

Adam had no idea what this meant. Some kind of reference. Strangely, it seemed to make Noah flicker back to them. 

"I know that. That's before your time," he told Ronan.

"I have Netflix, asshole."

"I don't," Adam said. They were nearing Monmouth now, and he thought it was important that they use any time they had with Noah to focus on the facts. "So part of my job isn't just to fix the line? It's to get rid of the things on it that people shouldn't have dreamed?"

Noah picked at his sweater, like he didn't realize that Adam was addressing him. Maybe he didn't. Adam shot a look at Ronan now. 

"We have to kill shit and fix the line," Ronan said, shrugging. "Fine."

He did look more fine with it than Adam would have expected. Nightmares were depressingly routine for Ronan, Adam knew. By now he faced them as gamely and forcefully as he'd faced the tree-creature. He was braver than Adam usually bothered to reflect on, and Adam had a sudden urge to reach out and take his hand. But Noah was here and Monmouth loomed up ahead, so he focused on pulling into the lot next to the BMW and getting the driver-side door -- prone to sticking -- to open without breaking it.

"You know you can fix your own car, right?" Ronan said, as he climbed out on his side.

Adam shrugged. He'd never wanted to spend time on it before. His spare time was for Gansey and Blue, Noah and Ronan. Now he wished he had more, for Ronan alone. 

Noah took this opportunity to escape up to Monmouth, grumbling.

"Put a sock on your door if you don't want to hear it," Ronan called.

"That's for you to do!" Noah shrieked back.

Ronan shrugged. Then, rolling his eyes, he warred with the door from the outside as Adam fought it from the inside. When it gave suddenly and Adam almost fell out, he was there with open arms. Literally. Ridiculously. He looked momentarily so proud of himself that Adam started laughing. 

Ronan froze. "This wouldn't happen if you'd fix your--"

Adam kissed him. He couldn't help it. He was tired of dancing around the thought of Ronan all day. Maybe more than all day. Maybe for as long as he'd known Ronan. But he had Ronan now. So, kissing. He was half-climbing out of the car as he did it, so it was sloppy and messy and uncomfortable at first. Then he found his footing and shoved the door closed without a foot, not caring about the complaining sounds it made. He pulled Ronan in by his hoodie and leaned against the shitty car. Kept Ronan in his hands, close to him. His. He found that he liked several things about Ronan this late in the day: the scratchiness to his jaw, the way his energy gave way as soon as Adam curved one hand around his head. He even liked the soft buzz of Ronan's shorn hair. He liked how doing this outside meant anyone could see, and he liked how Ronan didn't seem to care about that any more than Adam did -- no matter who it might be. Aglionby people. Henrietta people. Noah. Blue. Gansey.

Gansey.

Adam pulled off reluctantly. Ronan groaned and then turned it fluidly into a swear, spat into the ground. Ronan was spoiled and bad about denial. He always had been. But a part of Adam understood, because he wanted to keep kissing too. He kept his hands wound around Ronan, stroked the back of his neck, pulled him further in.

"We have to research what's going to happen to Gansey," he said now. 

Ronan shook his head.

"No one knows Gansey's shit like Gansey," he said. " _Gansey_ already knows what's in his books. He's the one who can figure out what applies in there. We shouldn't be researching for him. We should be telling him. He deserves to know."

Adam frowned. Ronan wasn't wrong. This was the problem with Ronan's cut-glass take on truths -- he was hardly ever wrong. But the truth could be so horrible, so ringed with bruises and so clear to onlookers, that to acknowledge it seemed like the worst thing. To acknowledge it seemed like it could leave casualties.

"How do we explain about Blue?" he asked tightly. "If we tell him that she knew he would walk the corpse road--"

" _She_ should have fucking told him," Ronan said, ruthless now. "She shouldn't have kept it a secret."

"She's our friend," Adam insisted. He clung to that because that was truth, too. Blue was in. Blue was part of the team. Adam owed her that.

"Good," Ronan said. "So she'll know why she should come clean."

Then, without warning, he was shoving off of Adam and stalking away angrily, Chainsaw flapping behind him. 

This made more than three fights in two days. About normal for him and Ronan, but Adam didn't want this to be about normal. They had to get better at this. Maybe Adam was doing it wrong. Wanting Ronan was very easy for him now that he'd faced up to it, but things were not supposed to be easy. He'd assumed that being with Ronan wouldn't be like everything else in his life, wouldn't be something to think about, to be careful with, to plan for. He'd let it be easy instead.

He felt stupid. 

He would have to teach himself to do this right. He always did have to teach himself. He was damaged in this way, bad at things like this. He'd proven that time and time again. He slid now against the side of the Hondayota and rested in the gravel lot for a few minutes, fifteen minutes or so, thinking it over. 

He wouldn't fight with Ronan. He would be better. He would do this right. 

But when he finally let himself into Monmouth's main room, Ronan had already gone past the point Adam usually wanted to deal with. Not just angry, not just wild, but ringed with that kind of destruction that Ronan thought he wore so well. He was all savage spine and fluid arms, serving tennis balls at empty bottles that he'd lined up on the table. Some were just beer bottles. Others were iridescent, sparkling. Clearly dream creations. Ronan shattered both the worthless ones and the valuable ones. Noah sat on Gansey's bed and clearly knew it was fruitless to intervene, because he made a face at Adam.

For a moment, Adam's plan to fix this left his mind. He closed his eyes. Brought it back. Stayed present.

"Okay," he told Ronan. "Great. Now when he gets back we can tell him he's going to die _and_ that you trashed his home."

Ronan stopped and took a swig of his beer, stepped forward to line up the bottle on the table. Aside from that he didn't say anything. He retreated back to his serving position, tall and cheerless, the curl of his lip malicious.

"You should go," Adam told Noah.

Noah clearly knew what would happen, because he went.

"He's not back until tomorrow morning," Ronan said, once Noah had faded out. "They sent out an email blast. They're canceling classes tomorrow, so he decided to stay longer."

Another serve. The latest bottle shattered against the far wall. Something reared up in Adam, instinctive. An urge to flee. If not physically, then mentally. Adam fought it down. Leaving wasn't always the only option. Sometimes you left and you couldn't get back to the good things.

Ronan said, "So you want to tell him now?"

He was removed and cold still, collected in his hostility. But when Adam crossed to him and took his arm, he at least stopped breaking things. Adam gestured at Ronan's room and went in. Ronan miraculously followed.

"Sit," Adam instructed, pointing to his bed. Ronan sat, looking less surly now, more vulnerable. Good. Adam had wanted to start this with kisses, but Ronan would taste like beer. Adam wanted to taste him but not that. So he focused on undoing Ronan's jeans. He would be more methodical about it now -- he'd thought through the things Ronan had seemed to like, and the things they hadn't had a chance to try yet.

But Ronan caught his wrists.

"What are you--"

"I'm sick of fighting," Adam said in a rush. "I don't have time for it. I don't have the energy. We should just--"

"Just what?" Ronan said, eyes widening. "Just _fuck_?"

Adam shrugged. He felt unsure. Not quite here. But he managed a grin. "That's the plan, right?"

He'd thought Ronan would be happy about it, but Ronan looked dumbfounded. Then, after a second, angry.

"You can't use it like that!"

"I'm not using it," Adam insisted. "It's just--I'd rather be doing this--"

"You literally just called it a fucking plan," Ronan said.

"I'm the magician!" Adam said, not caring now that they were fighting again. "I plan! That's what I do. That's what you asked me to do. That's what you like, even--"

"I like _you_ ," Ronan said savagely. He leaned in to kiss Adam. Adam smelled his breath. It must have shown on his face, because Ronan swore and backed off.

"Come on," he muttered, pulling Adam towards the bathroom/kitchen/laundry room. He took down a fancy electric toothbrush, slathered Gansey's boutique toothpaste all over it, and started brushing his teeth. Adam sat on the toilet and wondered how it was possible for them to be this bad at this. Ronan wasn't even looking at him. He glowered at himself in the mirror instead. Adam waited for him to finish brushing and rinsing, expected him to say something. 

He didn't. He put his toothpaste down and swigged some mouthwash. Then he leaned against the sink and kept glowering, like he couldn't find the words. 

Maybe Adam had to speak for him.

"You like the Magician," he suggested. He kept it a suggestion. He'd been so convinced that Ronan meant something when he said that word, meant something by the way he said it. Half-convinced that he meant something to Ronan because he could _be_ the Magician. He looked at his hands. Suddenly, if he'd been wrong, he didn't want to know it. 

"I like the Magician because he's you," Ronan said, voice very low. He pushed off of the sink and kneeled down before Adam on the cold tile. He lifted up Adam's shirt, pushed back his jacket. He pressed his check to the skin of Adam's stomach. Adam could feel Ronan's lashes against his skin.

Ronan repeated, "I like the Magician because he's you. It's not like I like you because you're the Magician. I like you."

Something hit Adam then, something unbidden and instinctive. It was relief. He identified it a little late. He was too busy feeling it, a sudden rush bringing him back to his body, letting him feel alright there, safe there for once. He curved his hands around Ronan's head now and held him. Stroked the dark fuzz. 

For a moment, he was so glad to have Ronan that it was intense, a pain. 

And somehow he was crying. It was so quiet that even he didn't notice at first. It only penetrated when Ronan reached up casually and wiped at his cheeks. Then he stood and pulled Adam up too. For a second they had their hands locked together the way they had yesterday -- Ronan seemed to like that -- but then Ronan was pushing off his jacket. Underneath the jacket, Adam's forearms and collarbone were grease-stained from Boyd's. Everything about him was a little grease-stained, really.

"Sorry," he said, pushing Ronan off with effort. He should have thought ahead, snagged a shower. He wanted to be clean for Ronan. "Sorry. I'm all dirty."

"Good," Ronan growled.

His arms were around Adam again, and it occurred to Adam that he was somehow soft in this, the way he'd been before. He was softer and slower and more gentle than Adam would have anticipated, even when he was tugging at Adam's clothes. Planting kisses along Adam's neck.

"I smell like cars," Adam confessed. Cars and sweat and Cabeswater dirt. There was a reason he'd been planning to keep this focused on Ronan. It wasn't grand self-sacrifice on his part. Sometimes he thought he must _smell_ , that people would only have to get near him to know he'd spent hours working in the dust and grime of the trailer factory, the garage.

But Ronan didn't stop kissing him.

"I like your smell," he told the hollow of Adam's throat. Then he had Adam backed up against the laundry machine and his hands were cupping Adam's ass. He was still mouthing his way along Adam's neck, sloppy, easy, affectionate. Adam was so unused to being touched that even this uncomplicated desire felt overwhelming. When Ronan managed to convey, by some gentle nudges here and there, that he wanted Adam up on the laundry machine, it took several tries before Adam managed it. 

As Ronan undid the buttons of Adam's jeans, he said, "If we fight, we fucking fight. If you're tired, fine. Be tired. You're allowed to get tired of it. But don't--don't fucking do this unless you want to do _this_. I don't want to do this with you if it's a lie. And I don't want it used like that."

He got Adam's jeans down, pulled away the cheap elastic of Adam's underwear so that his cock bobbed free. It was half-hard by now. It got hard at anything. It wasn't Adam's fault. He was eighteen.

"That's definitely not a lie," Adam managed.

But Ronan, because he was Ronan and he would always be edged, sharp, and difficult, took his time examining the evidence. He stroked Adam's dick just enough to get him to hurt, then abandoned it to pull off Adam's shirt and lick at Adam's nipples, let Adam shift with complaint and want on the cold metal of the laundry machine. Then he found a grease stain on Adam's knuckles and licked it experimentally. Adam was simultaneously horrified and turned on. He tried to protest, but it only came out like a groan.

Ronan looked perverse and very satisfied. He seemed to make up his mind about something. He leaned over now, and took Adam as deep as he could in his mouth. It was more than enough, hot and wet at the tip and then Ronan's hands stroking the rest of the way, rubbing, feeling Adam's length. Adam could see him from this angle, see his face and his lashes and his savage cheeks hollow out, and for a moment he couldn't understand how someone like Ronan was doing this for _Adam_. He moaned low in his throat and hooked his legs around Ronan's shoulders, pulled Ronan in closer. He wanted to grab Ronan and direct him, but beat back the thought. That felt wrong, like directing a summer storm. Instead he fisted his hands in Ronan's hoodie and curled as close to him as he could, whispering things, telling Ronan how good it was and how glad he was to feel this. He had to say it, had to let Ronan know how much he meant to him, how _lucky_ Adam was. Ronan pulled the words out of him in soft moans. Ronan wanted to hear him, wanted to know what Adam was feeling when he did this. 

Hearing it had an effect. Halfway through, one of Ronan's wonderful hands left and then Adam could see that Ronan was rubbing himself off now, frantic with his own desire. Somehow that did it: the thought of Ronan feeling this good himself. Adam curled around him tighter and nearly sobbed his release, and this time Ronan pulled off and nuzzled him as he came, messy and uncontrolled. It caught on the angles and magnificent hollows of Ronan's face and Adam admired this, panting, trapped in how good it was to have this body and to have Ronan here with him. 

When he came to his senses he reached for the paper towels on the fridge and carefully wiped Ronan off, kissed the places where he'd dirtied him.

"Sorry," he murmured into Ronan's cheek. Ronan made a keening noise. His hand was still in his pants, furiously jerking his own dick. Adam reached over and pulled down the waistband to see it. He wanted to see it. 

"I was thinking about you doing this yesterday," he told Ronan. "I was thinking about you making yourself come, when I was in here. I was thinking about you standing in the shower doing this."

Ronan swore. He worked himself faster now. He took his time with Adam; with Adam he was careful. But he seemed to have little reverence for his own body. He handled it more carelessly, more violently than Adam thought it deserved, so driven by his want that he didn't bother to be gentle, even though he'd proven that he could be.

Then again, this was Ronan. He'd decided at some point that energy and violence and anger would be for him, would _be_ him. 

That was bullshit. It really was. Adam slid down from the washing machine and grabbed some lotion from the top of the fridge. He touched Ronan's arm, somehow got Ronan to redirect his attention. 

Adam managed to pull him across the main room, all the way to his bed. Adam wasn't sure _how_ he managed it. Ronan was less Ronan now than he was a swearing, keening, bright-eyed creature of need. He was strung tight, quivering as he pulled off his jeans and hoodie and shirt, cursing up a storm. Adam shut the door on Chainsaw and went to join him by the bed. He sat at the edge and put some lotion in his hands and then pulled Ronan onto him, felt Ronan's weight settle on him fully. He pressed his cheek to Ronan's back, spooned like that, and settled his hands around Ronan's length as Ronan leaned back fully, panting. His own dick was trapped, pressed into Ronan's ass now and he could feel it hardening again, could feel how he liked this. He liked the friction there. He stroked Ronan with one hand, letting the lotion make it smoother, wetter. With his other hand he rubbed the head of Ronan's dick, hearing Ronan gasp and feeling him arch his back, dig himself against Adam's cock. 

"That's good," Adam told him encouragingly. "That's good, Ronan."

Ronan's moans signaled how close to undone he was, and Adam welcomed it, leaned over him and worked him and let him rut back, wild and pleased.

"You're good," Adam told him, kissing his back. "You're good. That's good. Do you like that?"

He knew Ronan had to be close. Adam was too good with his hands for that not to be the case. Ronan jerked back against his cock and thrust into his hands, achieving a rhythm, swearing up a storm. Adam moved with him, settled into his pace. It wasn't as fast as it was when Ronan worked himself. It was sweeter, more forgiving without letting go of the friction, the pull, the edge of want. Adam kept kissing him and telling him how good he was, how he deserved to have it good.

"No," Ronan said, shaking his head. He had a fist in his mouth. Adam brought one hand up and captured it, kept stroking him with the other.

"Yes," he said, kissing Ronan's neck. He said in time with each stroke. "Yes, yes, yes."

Ronan was still shaking his head when he came with a yell. Adam kept stroking him all the way through, kept up the rhythm. When Ronan was done he backed them into the headboard, pulled him close, wound his arms around him. Rested his head against his back. 

Ronan was still shaking his head.

So Adam told him, solemnly, truthfully, "You're so good. I'm lucky to have you, Ronan. I am. I am."


	12. Chapter 12

They sat like that for some time, Adam holding him, before Ronan turned around and reached for Adam in turn. Ronan was tactile. Adam could say it all he wanted, but Ronan needed to have him in his arms to believe it. 

"I think you're really good for me," Adam said anyway, into the hollow of Ronan's throat. 

Ronan responded by pulling Adam in even closer, tangling their legs together, feeling along the whole length of him. Adam let him. He liked this. He wanted to stay close. He pressed his face into Ronan's neck and dozed off.

Horribly, his own body ruined things. Twenty minutes in, his stomach growled. Loudly. Adam ignored it because he always did, but Ronan lifted himself up on one elbow. Adam shifted off of him, uncomfortable. Ronan was looking down at him, eyebrows raised, unimpressed.

Adam flushed.

"Sorr--"

"If you wanted me to get you some fucking food, you could have asked--"

Adam hit him with the thumping pillow again.

"I didn't ask you for any food."

"Well, too bad, because that's what I got us," Ronan said.

Then he was up and shrugging on what looked like a boxer's robe, black and masculine and made of some expensive fabric. He threw something at Adam as he went out. It was the same thing, but green. Adam wondered if he'd dreamt it or bought it or had Gansey gift it to him at some seasonally-appropriate moment.

He put the robe on and followed Ronan out to the main room. Ronan was stepping over the shattered glass, cursing like he'd forgotten it was there. He slipped on a pair of shoes and kicked it all into a corner near the door, then began setting up the table. Adam watched him, befuddled.

In his travels throughout the day, Ronan had apparently decided to pick up dinner. Like much about Ronan, it was furtive and considerate and strange. He produced black candles. Fresh bread stamped with the imprint of small ravens. Fancy pasta-ball-dumpling things, which Adam poked at somewhat doubtfully. There were even little sugar skulls made of candy. Ronan watched him try everything and practically vibrated with energy. It was clear that he wanted Adam to ask where he'd gotten everything, so Adam, between bites, pointed at everything on the table and said things like,

"Shop 'n Save?"

Ronan swore. 

"I didn't go to _Shop 'n Save_ for our food, Parrish--"

"Wade's?"

"Fuck no."

"Target."

"Fuck you."

Adam smiled around a raven bun. He couldn't help it. He speared some of the pasta things -- they were not like anything he knew, but they were food, so Adam would eat them all -- and said, "Rome?"

Ronan nodded. He added, thoughtfully, "I took it off somebody's table in a piazza somewhere."

That settled the question of how much Adam owed him for it. Nothing, apparently. He probably owed some tourists somewhere in Italy. He frowned. Ronan smiled through a mouthful of food, unrepentant and disgusting.

It was good, though. Adam ate fast and ate it all, embarrassed at himself, unable to help it. Sometimes he thought he was always hungry. Ronan's foot reached for his under the table as they ate. Adam's reached back.

"So did you seriously jerk off in our shower?" Ronan said, as Adam was crunching his teeth into a sugar skull. Adam almost choked.

"Once--"

"Freak."

" _Once_."

"Whatever. I've jerked off in your shower more than once."

Adam stared at him.

"I live above your church, Ronan."

"Don't tell me what to do in my own church," Ronan said horribly, biting into a skull of his own.

"My shower's probably right above the statue of Mary."

"She doesn't know. Catholic rules, man. She's a lady saint. She doesn't get told about guy masturbation. Heaven's not gross like that."

This seemed sexist at worst and ludicrous at best, but Ronan looked very serious about it. And it was his religion. Adam didn't want to be irreverent with it. He backed off.

"Sorry," he said hurriedly. "Sorry. I didn't realize there was actually--"

Ronan started laughing. Adam balled up a napkin and threw it at him. It didn't make him stop laughing and Adam didn't mind. He didn't think he'd ever seen Ronan laugh this way, genuine and free. Gansey had sometimes mentioned the Ronan he'd known before Ronan's father had died, the openness of him, the levity. Adam had never bothered to think about that Ronan very much because it seemed pointless. Ronan couldn't be expected to go back; no one could do that. 

But if this was what Gansey had missed so badly, then Adam understood a little better. Now Adam understood.

"It's actually, 'whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her,'" Ronan was saying now, a little thoughtfully, "'Hath already committed adultery--'"

"Yeah, I think you're good," Adam said wryly.

"Right?" Ronan said. 

Adam said, a little wistfully, "I thought you'd be more serious about this."

Ronan shrugged. Suddenly he was more serious, he was looking down at his plate and smashing into his food with his fork, and Adam was sorry for it.

"It matters a lot," Ronan said. "To me. I mean. I need it. I used to go to church and ask -- just ask what I was."

Silence.

"And?" Adam prompted.

Ronan shrugged. "I still don't know. But if I'm going to go to hell for abusing procreative power and all that shit our priest told Declan when my dad caught him whacking off--"

That was a story. Adam was scared to ask about that story.

"--then it'll be because I can take shit out of my brain. Not because I touched my dick a few times. But if God wants to punish me for making Matthew and Chainsaw, then..."

Ronan trailed off. Shrugged again. Eviscerated his remaining food.

"You took a part of the ley line," Adam said slowly, thinking it through. "You took Cabeswater. And you made it something different. And you brought it out of your dreams and off the line. And you let live. Twice, Ronan. Twice. You took magic and made it real."

Ronan looked at him almost fearfully. Adam reached across the table and grabbed his hand.

"I don't think that's anything you need to be punished for," Adam told him. He meant it. Adam had been punished so many times in his life that he found the concept essentially worthless. But, more than that, he could hardly see why Ronan should be singled out for special retribution, and certainly not for breathing himself into part of the magic around him, touching and shaping the ley line and giving it freedom and life.

If that was wrong, then Adam didn't care. Ronan was a trouble-maker on a cosmic scale, spitting oaths, spilling blood, fighting, challenging. And now it was Adam's hand he clung to. Adam closed his eyes. He was glad. He was grateful.

"Hey," Ronan said suddenly.

Adam looked at him. He was washed out by the light of the candles but still handsome, a conjurer relaxed. He said, "What are we going to do if you have a roommate?"

Adam had no idea what he was talking about.

"In college," Ronan said, rolling his eyes. "At Stanford or wherever."

"Sock on the door?"

Ronan didn't take his hand away but he looked like he was considering it.

"I'm serious," he growled. "What if you get some fake Californian rooming with you?"

"As opposed to a real Californian like your mother?" Adam said.

Ronan swore. Adam let him. The roommate issue seemed very small, next to monsters and ley lines and death looming. Though now Ronan's problem seemed to be less the possibility or a roommate and more Adam's general Adam-ness.

"Eat your fucking gnocchi," he told Adam.

"I don't know what that is," Adam said. But he did eat everything on his plate, and then everything Ronan had mashed around on his. Adam couldn't waste food. Ronan watched him and held his hand as he ate. Somehow managed to hold it aggressively, even, like he worried that Adam would try and pull it away to grab more food.

"You'd better get a really good job from whatever college you go to," he said, when it was nearly all polished off.

"That's the plan," Adam said.

"And then what?" Ronan said. "Then you just keep working?" He looked like he mistrusted this idea.

Adam's brain said, _I think we're getting ahead of ourselves_ , but Adam's voice said, "I'll take vacations. Someday. Hopefully someday."

He did want that. He wanted -- he wanted to be out of here. He wanted college. He wanted to do what the line needed. He wanted to leave Cabeswater thriving. He wanted to keep Gansey with them. He wanted a place that was like a home, whatever that was, and he wanted to see Rome again, and he wanted time off sometimes, a minute to catch his breath, to feel free. He wanted to never leave his body again, and he wanted to keep his mind. He wanted alignment. He wanted one of those fancy toothbrushes, the kind that whirred; and he wanted to have a bed piled high with blankets and pillows. He wanted time to do his laundry. Food for his apartment. A car worth fixing. His friends. A full scholarship next year. More of those pasta balls. Ronan. 

It was strange to reach the end of his list and find that he had what he wanted for once. He stood and crossed to Ronan's side of the table, pulled him in, kissed him again. 

"We should take a shower," he suggested.

"So you can jerk off in it again?"

"Do you want that?" Adam said, not skipping a beat.

" _Fuck_ yes," Ronan said, unrestrained as ever.

But this time Ronan jerked him off, and Adam got Ronan off, and it was a little lazier and easier, more comfortable than it had been the other two times. Less like Adam needed to prove something. Better because it was a little less overwhelming now he knew what to expect, now that he knew how good it could feel to be so aware of his own body and Ronan's. They fell into bed together after that. The second time in his life that Adam slept curled around anybody. This time, when Ronan woke him in the night, he pulled him in closer and took what he'd dreamt out of his hands before Ronan could hide it. It was a vine. It didn't tie or coil itself around anything. It purred and curled in on itself like a cat when Adam stroked it. He let it alone.

"You're good," he told Ronan, in case Ronan was worried about it.

Then he slept. 

In the morning, they found Gansey stepping gingerly over the glass on the floor of the main room, broad-shouldered, even more bronzed than usual after a weekend in the outdoors. He was wearing his glasses. He looked terribly real, magnificently alive. He said, "Why is there glass on the floor?" very politely. 

He very easily put together what they'd done all night. They weren't wearing much, after all. They could see him file it away politely, a little curiously. Then he discovered the plates from the piazza on the table. He said, "Well, I hope you washed your hands before you ate." 

Blue had stepped in after him, but she was quiet at first. There was something firm about her. Something pale too. She wore loss on her, somehow, like it was a piece of the line made real, like she had tucked it into a corner of her messy hair. So that Adam looked at her long and hard and _knew_.

He said, voice low, "Did you tell him?"

And the sharp set of her chin told him. 

_He knows. Gansey knows_.

She and Gansey'd had their own weekend, after all.

So then they sat on the floor near Gansey's model of Henrietta -- all four of them, plus Noah, who they acquired at some point -- and explained what they knew. And Gansey said, very evenly, "It's going to happen."

But Adam shook his head harshly, hardly even realizing he was doing it. He said, "I drew another card, though. I did."

"The Magician," Blue said. She did not say it like it had power. She said it like it was an old story she'd heard somewhere, now given new meaning and growth.

Ronan put his hand on the small of Adam's back and said, for Adam, "That's you."

And Adam didn't have the solutions to their problems yet. But something in him aligned anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I could not resist giving them an actual candlelit dinner.  
> 2\. They really need to give Blue a pair of seven-league boots.  
> 3\. Blue and Gansey's weekend was probably really tragic? Anyway, file that away as a potential future fic idea.  
> 4\. Idaho and Brown are perfectly nice places. Californians can be very good people.  
> 5\. I am on [tumblr](nimmieamee.tumblr.com). Feel free to come talk to me about Adam Parrish. 
> 
> & if you liked this, please let me know!


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